Program, system and method for linking community programs and merchants in a marketing program

ABSTRACT

The present invention is a system, data access management utility and a method of generating links between local merchants and community programs, whereby the merchant may provide incentives to customers in relation to community programs. The present invention may track community programs, as well as both online and offline customer transactions between participants that make use of the incentive. The present invention may include as participants, customers, merchants, community organizations, intermediaries, and other groups or individuals. Participants may have participant identifiers, which may be linked to a payment source. Data may be collected about all participants, either expressly, or from offline or online transactions between participants utilizing a participant identifier, and said data may be stored in a data storage area. All data in the data storage area may be utilized by logic tool, which may provide information, such as details of consumer behaviour and analytic reporting. Matches between transactions and members and/or member activities may be identified by the system, and a level of certainty that the match is accurate may be determined.

CROSS-REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATIONS

This application is a divisional of U.S. patent application Ser. No.12/944,474, filed on Nov. 11, 2010, which is a continuation of PCTapplication PCT/CA2009/001605, filed on Nov. 6, 2009; both of which arehereby incorporated by reference in their entireties.

FIELD OF THE INVENTION

The present invention relates to customer transactions and a marketingsystem promoting links between community programs, merchants, membersand possibly intermediaries.

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION

Several systems presently exist that provide reward points or discountsto member customers. Most of these are set-up as loyalty systems wherebya loyalty card or number is provided to a customer. A customer may gainreward points when a transaction occurs and the loyalty card or numberis provided at the point of the transaction. Generally, the use of theloyalty card or number is recorded at the point of sale device.Accumulated reward points can be redeemed for products, discounts, orother rewards. Such loyalty systems are provided directly by a merchantor by an organization representing one or more merchants.

Additionally, systems have been created whereby reward pointsaccumulated by a user may be donated to an organization, such as acharitable organization. For example, U.S. patent application Ser. No.11/746,502 discloses an invention wherein a percentage of a transactioncost may be donated directly to a charitable organization. The choice todonate reward points, or a percentage (or other portion) of atransaction, to a charitable organization may be at the discretion of acustomer. For example, the choice may be made at the time of registeringwith a loyalty program, so that specified future transactions willautomatically generate a donation. Alternatively, the choice may be madeat the point of redeeming reward points, whereby the customer can directparticular points to a charitable organization. Yet another option isfor the choice to be made at the time of the transaction.

SUMMARY OF INVENTION

In one aspect, the present disclosure relates to a marketing systemoperable to promote one or more merchants and the products and servicesof the one or more merchants in a inter-connected environment,comprising: a data collection server operable by one or more computerprocessors to receive or access data including data pertaining to one ormore members and the one or more merchants that are participants of themarketing program; a transaction details processor operable to collectand transfer details of one or more transactions to the data collectionserver, said one or more transactions occurring between the one or moremerchants and the one or more members; a transaction linking utilityoperable to process and analyze search history details, the transactiondetails, and the data of the data collection server to determine thelikelihood that one of the one or more transactions is the result of thesearch results provided to a user or one of the one or more members; anda data mining tool operable to analyze by operation of the one or morecomputer processors of the of the data collection server, thetransaction details and the data regarding the one or members and theone or more merchants, said data mining tool further being operable togenerate one or more incentives to increase the transactions, forexample the number or value of the transactions, occurring between theone or more merchants and the one or more members.

In another aspect, the present disclosure relates to a marketing programmethod comprising the following steps: one or more members providinginformation to the marketing program during a sign-up process and basedupon subsequent activities; one or merchants providing information tothe marketing program during a sign-up process and based upon subsequentactivities; one or more intermediaries providing information to themarketing program during a sign-up process and based upon subsequentactivities; generating one or more incentives to be offered by one ormore of the one or more merchants to the one or more members by way ofone of the following: off-line media; an online search or browsingsession undertaken by one of the one or more members; or directcommunication to the communication device of one of the one or moremembers; applying the one or more incentives to provide one or morebenefits to at least an intermediary; providing details of thetransaction to the marketing program; utilizing a transaction linkingutility to determine the likelihood that a match exists between thetransaction details and activity by one of the one or more members; andutilizing a data mining tool to generate future incentive suggestions.

In this respect, before explaining at least one embodiment of theinvention in detail, it is to be understood that the invention is notlimited in its application to the details of construction and to thearrangements of the components set forth in the following description orillustrated in the drawings. The invention is capable of otherembodiments and of being practiced and carried out in various ways.Also, it is to be understood that the phraseology and terminologyemployed herein are for the purpose of description and should not beregarded as limiting.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

The invention will be better understood and objects of the inventionwill become apparent when consideration is given to the followingdetailed description thereof. Such description makes reference to theannexed drawings wherein:

FIG. 1 is a systems view of the marketing program.

FIG. 2 is a view of a merchant incentive communicated to a smart phone.

FIG. 3 is a systems view of a data transfer between a merchant, amember, the marketing system and a data storage area.

FIG. 4 is a systems view of a transfer of donations by the marketingsystem.

FIG. 5 is a screen view of a merchant information web page.

FIG. 6 is a systems view of a search request process.

FIG. 7 is a view of the flow of one embodiment of the marketing programgenerating members through a boarding process.

FIG. 8 is a flowchart showing the steps in one embodiment of theinvention for a user to query a merchant and redeem an incentive at amerchant's bricks and mortar store location.

FIG. 9 is a system diagram showing the marketing system outputs that maybe generated by the data mining tool, and sometimes the analytic mode,in embodiments of the present invention.

FIG. 10 is a flowchart showing the options for member interaction withthe marketing program in one embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 11 is a flowchart showing the options for an embodiment of thepresent invention involving cross-selling.

In the drawings, embodiments of the invention are illustrated by way ofexample. It is to be expressly understood that the description anddrawings are only for the purpose of illustration and as an aid tounderstanding, and are not intended as a definition of the limits of theinvention.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE PREFERRED EMBODIMENT

The present invention is a system, data access management utility and amethod of generating links between local merchants and communityprograms, whereby the merchant may provide incentives to customers inrelation to community programs. The present invention may trackcommunity programs, as well as customer transactions, including bothonline and offline transactions, that occur between participants andthat make use of the incentive, as further detailed below. The presentinvention may include as participants: customers, merchants, communityorganizations, intermediaries, and other groups or individuals,including merchants, members and intermediaries of the marketing systemof the present invention. Participants may have participant identifiers.The participant identifiers may be generated by the marketing system ormay be linked to a payment source. Data may be collected about allparticipants, either expressly, or from offline or online transactionsbetween participants utilizing a participant identifier, and said datamay be stored in a data storage area. All data in the data storage areamay be accessed by a data mining tool, a transaction linking utility,and an analytic mode, which may provide results that includeinformation, such as details of consumer behaviour and analyticreporting. Matches between transactions and members may be identified bythe transaction linking utility, and a level of certainty that the matchis accurate may be determined.

For the purpose of this patent application, the term “communityprograms” may be understood to define an ongoing community program (suchas a shelter in a community), a term community program (such as acharity funding drive), or a community event (such as a festival). Theterm “community programs” may further be understood to define acommunity program serving a specific area (such as a festival held in alocal park), a community program serving a neighbourhood (such as aneighbourhood clothing drive), a community program serving a larger area(such as a city-wide hosting of a sporting event), or a communityprogram serving a still wider area (such as a national literacy program,or an international development program).

Businesses in the marketing program are referred to as “merchants”,while customers are referred to as “members”. An entity granted limitedparticipation in a marketing program, such as for a specific term, oronly granted the ability to participate in specific activities, such asan advertising associate, may be referred to as an “intermediary”. Theterm “participants” may reference any entity participating in amarketing program, including merchants, members, intermediaries, systemadministrator(s) and any other participant in the marketing system.

The present invention may involve an Internet, intranet or othernetworked environment. Therefore, any reference to any of Internet,intranet or other networked environment should be understood broadly toencompass not only the referenced term, but all of Internet, intranet orother networked environment. In the same manner terms indicating aspectsof either the Internet, an intranet or another networked environment,such as a webpage in an Internet environment, should be understoodbroadly to include the equivalent available in the Internet, intranet orother networked environment.

The marketing system of the present invention may be particularlyadvantageous for local or regional participant merchants. Thesemerchants typically do not have a significant, if any, online presence(e.g., they may be strictly a “brick and mortar store”). The presentinvention may enable such merchants to benefit from access to, and/orgeneration of, real-time analytic information relating to members,community programs, and other information that would not otherwise beavailable to them. For example, the transaction linking utility, and thedata mining tool of the present invention, sometimes with an analyticmode, may be used by a local participant merchant store to derive actualor projected customer behaviour information and other reporting. As anexample of the function of the marketing system, such information orreports may be utilized to design future incentive programs to beimplemented by merchants and to generate links between local merchantsand community programs operating in a nearby location.

Such links may include, for example, incentive programs that provide adonation to a community program based upon a purchase between acustomer, such as a member of the marketing system, and merchant of themarketing system, incentive programs that occur during a communityprogram event, such as a festival, or other incentive programs that linkcommunity programs and merchants. The links may be formed because theactivities of the community program and the merchant become intertwinedand/or inter-reliant. Returning to the prior examples of incentiveprograms, the link between the merchant and the community program occursin the former example because donations are provided to the communityprogram upon a purchase from a merchant, and in the latter examplebecause the merchant incentive is only offered during the time of acommunity program event. The activities of the community program and themerchant become inter-reliant. A skilled reader will recognize that avariety of other links may be formed between merchants and communityprograms through a variety of other means or other types of incentiveprograms as well.

Overview

In one embodiment of the present invention a system administrator of amarketing system may facilitate the collection of information regardingcommunity programs. This may involve community programs providinginformation to the system administrator of their own volition and/or thesystem administrator searching for, and requesting, community programinformation. Such community programs may be occurring in the immediate,near or distant future. The information may be collected via an onlinesearch, a search of one or more community databases, from informationsent by community programs to the administrator, or other means.Information regarding community programs may be stored in a data storagesource, such as a database. Merchants, members and other groups orindividuals may become participants in the marketing system. Eachparticipant may have a participant identifier. Upon joining themarketing system, or after joining, the participants may provideinformation regarding themselves, including the location of theparticipant (e.g., a merchant's store(s) location(s), a customer's homeand/or work address, etc.) to the marketing system. The marketing systemmay store the information as data in the storage area.

The data in the storage area may be mined by a data mining tool. Thedata mining tool may be utilized by any participant of the marketingsystem. For example, the data mining tool may be used to match acommunity program to a participant merchant in the area where thecommunity program is to occur, or is occurring. The result may be that alocal participant merchant may be made aware of an upcoming localfestival. The participant merchant may devise a merchant incentive inrelation to the community program, such as a discount, a donation to thecommunity program, a give away, a sweepstakes entry, rewards (such asreward points) or any other incentive.

The data mining tool may also be utilized to identify members of themarketing system who are identified as existing near the participantmerchant store location. For example, the data mining tool may identifyparticipant members living and/or working in the area of the merchantstore location and/or one or more community programs, in accordance withmember profile information and other data stored in the data storagearea and any linked data sources. The data mining tool may also beutilized to identify participant members who may be likely to visit themerchant store and/or make use of the incentive, in accordance withdemographic information or preferences derived from data stored in thedata storage area and any linked data sources. A skilled reader willrecognize that other information regarding a member, for example, suchas transactional behaviour, may also be utilized to identify participantmembers who may be likely to visit the merchant store and make use ofthe incentive.

The merchant, or another market system participant working with themerchant, may advertise the merchant's one or more incentives and/or thecommunity program to at least the members identified by the data miningtool. Such advertisements may be communicated to an identified memberand/or other potential customers by a variety of online and offlinemeans, including a webpage, an email, a communication sent to a mobiledevice, a print advertisement, a radio advertisement, etc.

In an embodiment of the present invention that involves cross-selling orcross-loyalty, as described in more detail below, the invention mayfacilitate consecutive, or simultaneous, communication of relatedincentives. For example, incentives of two merchants involved in across-selling program may be communicated either immediately one afterthe other, or together. The communication may further indicate a link orother connection between the incentives based upon the cross-sellingprogram. A skilled reader will recognize that a variety of ways toindicate cross-selling or cross-loyalty incentives may be provided.

In one embodiment of the present invention, a member may view a displayof incentives on a webpage when the member logs onto the marketingsystem website. The display may be immediately presented after login, ormay be presented upon a selection by the member, such as the selectionof a particular webpage, a link, or an incentive display option.

In another embodiment of the present invention, a merchant may have anoption regarding setting the prominence of the communication of anincentive to a member or other participant. For example, a merchant maymake a request, and may pay a fee, for a particular prominence of anincentive in a communication to a member, other participant or any thirdparties. A merchant may also be given the opportunity to bid for a moreprominent communication or display of an incentive to a member,participant of the marketing system, or third party. A skilled readerwill recognize that prominent communication or displays of an incentivemay involve a variety of criteria, such as, for example: the time of daywhen a communication occurs via radio; the positioning of an incentiveon a webpage, printed page, or list showing one or more incentives; thetypeface or graphics (e.g., bold, coloured, etc.) of an incentive on awebpage or printed page; etc.

A participant and/or third party may redeem an incentive, through anonline of offline transaction. Transaction details of transactionsoccurring between a merchant and a participant or third party, may bestored in the data storage area. At the time of the transaction amember, or other participant, may provide a marketing system participantidentifier to a merchant.

Transaction details may be transferred to the marketing system forstorage and mining by a variety of means and at a variety of times. Forexample, transaction details may be transferred to the marketing systemin real-time (e.g., as a transaction occurs and concludes), nearreal-time (e.g., almost immediately after a transaction concludes),and/or after a time lapse (e.g., at the end of a time period, such as aset time(s) during a day, at the end of the day, at the end of a week,at month-end, or at any other time after a transaction is finished,information regarding one or more transactions may be provided to themarketing system). The data mining tool may be utilized collect datafrom the storage area, and possibly other data sources, to generatespecific information, for example, such as information regardingconsumer behaviour data that may provide: one or more reports pertainingto a particular incentive (e.g., success of an incentive); informationto be utilized to create a new incentive; suggestions of new incentives;or other information.

In particular, the data mining tool may be utilized to determine if atransaction occurred as a result of an incentive. For example, the datamining tool may be engaged (and optionally the analytic mode may also beengaged) to recognize particular pre-transaction behaviour by aparticipant, for example, such as the search for a merchant or a productby a participant, communication of an incentive to a participant, orother information. The pre-transaction behaviour if followed by atransaction with a particular period of time may be assumed by themarketing system to indicate that the transaction occurred based uponthe incentive (or that the transaction occurred based upon the search).It is also possible for a post-transaction survey to be provided to theparticipant who engaged in the transaction, and data collected from thesurvey may establish that the transaction occurred due to the searchand/or the incentive. Such data may be utilized by the marketing system,merchant, and/or other participants to make determinations about futureincentives, success of past incentives, marketing strategies, and otherdecisions.

Embodiments of the present invention may include a transaction linkingutility to access the data in the data storage area or data extracted oranalyzed by the data mining tool and the analytic mode, and to utilizethis data to identify links between a transaction and a member. Forexample, the transaction linking utility may analyze the data torecognize the existence of links or matches between transactions andother behaviour or activities of members or users. As such, thetransaction linking utility may be operable to identify a match betweena search by a member and a later transaction when the member purchase aproduct or service at a merchant's store that the member had earliersearched. The transaction linking utility may further determine alikelihood or level of certainty that a transaction resulted from anearlier search by a member. This operability of the transaction linkingutility is described in more detail below. A skilled reader willrecognize that the transaction linking utility may utilize a widevariety of data to undertake its function and may link a transaction toa wide variety of behaviours or activities by a member, and maydetermine the link to be of varying degrees of likelihood or certainty.The transaction linking facility may also involve data such as memberprofile data, including a member's financial card information, or amember's identification, to determine a link between a member and atransaction.

Participants of the marketing system, other than the administrator, maynot be provided with direct access to the data stored in the datastorage area. Thus, any personal information regarding a participantstored in the data storage area will not be accessible by participants.Additional security measures may be included in the marketing system toensure that personal information regarding a participant stored in thedata storage area will not be disseminated to participants. Suchsecurity measure may further include means whereby the data mining tool,transaction linking utility and analytic mode may generate informationin a manner so that such information is devoid of personal informationregarding specific participants. In this manner, privacy of information,including personal information, may be maintained by the marketingsystem. Privacy of information of the marketing system may meet orexceed any regulations regarding private information in a specificlocation or wider area.

Benefits of the Present Invention Over the Prior Art

The present invention may offer many benefits over the known prior art.For example, many local merchants lack the ability to access informationsources that offer both: information regarding community programs localto a merchant store location; and customer participant information. Thedata and other information either stored in the data storage area of themarketing system of the present invention, or in other data sources thatare accessible by the marketing system, may be queried to identifymembers likely to make use of a merchant incentive. The presentinvention permits local merchants to become participants of themarketing system and to access this information. The present inventionalso offers a greater level of control to the merchant to createspecific incentives related to community programs and to track the useparticipant members make of the incentives. Merchant store locations canbe easily linked into community programs in the same locality.

The present invention provides an additional benefit, in that thetracking of participant customer transactions that make use of anincentive does not require a point of sale system. The prior artgenerally utilizes a point of sale device to track transactions made bya customer having a rewards number or card at a store. Point of salessystems are expensive and may lack compatibilities with other point ofsale systems utilized by other merchants. In the present invention, astracking of transactions between merchants and members does not occur byway of the point of sales system, it is not necessary for a merchant toinstall an expensive point of sale system having tracking capabilitiesrequired by the prior art. Thus, the present invention may provide acost-effective means of tracking transactions as compared to expensiveprior art systems. Additionally, the present invention allows fortransaction tracking to occur whether the transaction occurs online oroffline. For example, a participant customer making a transaction in abricks and mortar location of a participant merchant may be trackable inaccordance with the present invention. Moreover, any participantmerchant incentive may be applied to a participant customer transactionthat occurs either online or offline.

Still other benefits of the present invention include the wide range ofinformation that is collected in a common data storage area for use bythe data mining tool, the transaction linking utility and the analyticmode, and the operability of the data mining tool, the transactionlinking utility and the analytic mode to prevent dissemination ofprivate and/or personal information. Prior art inventions do not involvethe collection of the breadth of information into a single location thatis accessible by a data mining tool, a transaction linking facility andan analytic mode, that the present invention achieves. Nor do prior artinventions limit the accessibility of private and/or personalinformation as effectively as the present invention.

Yet another benefit of the present invention over the prior art is thatthe present invention links seamlessly to social media and mobiledevices. Consequently, an individual is not required to visit themarketing system's website necessarily to participate in activities ofthe marketing system. For example, advertisements of incentives may beprovided via social media and/or mobile devices, as may surveys,information entry, and other facilities.

Another benefit of the present invention over the prior art, is that,should the incentive involve a donation to a community program, thedonation is reportable by the data mining tool in a clear manner. Theresult may be that the present invention offers accountability in itsreporting of donations. This accountability may also be the standard fordonations to community programs made by participants of the marketingsystem by other means than incentives. The donator can see that thedonation amount has been passed by a payment source to the communityprogram.

Still another benefit of the present invention over the prior art isthat the present invention may have several results for participants notachieved by prior art inventions.

The present invention may increase revenues of merchants by increasingtransactions of the merchants that are participants of the marketingsystem due to customer (including participants) interest in, or loyaltyto, community programs.

The present invention may increase customer (including participant)awareness of a local participant merchant store by permitting searchingfor the merchant, communicating incentives from the merchant to members,mapping features showing merchant locations, and other features of thepresent invention.

The present invention may also increase merchant goodwill by promotingthe merchant's support of one or more community programs. The presentinvention may increase support of community programs by making it easierfor merchants to become cognizant of community programs occurring nearmerchant stores in the same locality as the community programs. Thesupport of community programs by merchants may be financial, or may beby increasing participant consumer awareness of community programsoccurring in a particular location.

System

The present invention may include a marketing system involving a webserver accessible by an administrator, one or more merchants, and one ormore members registered with the marketing system. The web server mayalso be accessible, by way of specified and possibly limited access, byone or more intermediaries registered with the marketing system andthird parties. The web server may be linked to a data storage area. Datapertaining to the administrator, merchants, members and/orintermediaries may be stored in the data storage area. Some datapertaining to third parties may also be stored to the data storage areain some embodiments of the present invention. At least one participantidentifier may be stored in the data storage area for each registeredparticipant of the marketing system.

The web server may be operable so that a merchant may provideinformation to the web server regarding one or more transactions betweena merchant and a customer. The customer may be a member of the marketingsystem. A skilled reader will recognize that data pertaining to atransaction between a merchant and a member, or other customer, may betransferred to the web server by a variety of means, for example, suchas via manual entry, via another communication means, etc.

In one embodiment of the present invention, a point of sale facility mayalso be utilized by the marketing system in some embodiments of thepresent invention. The point of sale facility may be in communicationwith the web server, and may pass information regarding a transactionoccurring between a merchant and a customer to the web server. Thecustomer may be a member of the marketing system.

In another embodiment of the present invention, data, or otherinformation, may be transferred regarding a member or other participantfrom a separate data source, such as a data base, to the marketingsystem. For example, a member may be a financial card holder, and allfinancial card holders may be given the option to become members of themarketing program. The financial card company may also become anintermediary of the marketing system. Once a financial card holderagrees to become a member of the marketing system, information and otherdata regarding the financial card holder, as gathered by the financialcard company, may be either transferred to the marketing system, or maybe made accessible by the marketing system.

A skilled reader will recognize that other groups may become members,such as, for example store card holders, members of a community group,such as a co-op, bank card holders, or any other group, and that thepersons involved in the group may become members of the marketingsystem. The group may gather information independently from themarketing system and this information regarding persons who becomemembers of the marketing system may be made available to the marketingsystem via a transfer, or via access to the data source of the group.

The persons involved in the group may be granted an identification, suchas a numeric identification. This identification may be acknowledged bythe marketing system, so that when a person involved in the groupbecomes a member of the marketing system, the marketing system storesthe identification provided by the group. The identification may bestored in the marketing system as the participant identifier. In someembodiments of the present invention more than one participantidentifier may be stored in the marketing system for a member, or aparticipant identifier may be stored and other identifications may alsobe stored. Any transaction that occurs and utilizes the identificationmay be recognized by the marketing system as a transaction involving themember whom the identification represents.

For example, a financial card holder may be granted a financial cardnumber. The financial card holder may become a member of the marketingsystem. Upon becoming a member of the marketing system the financialcard number of the member may be transferred, or otherwise provided, tothe marketing system. The marketing system may utilize the financialcard number as an identification for the member.

The one or more identifications, or one or more participant identifiers,identified as pertaining to a member of the marketing system may beutilized by the member during a transaction. For example, a member mayutilize a financial card during the transaction and the financial cardnumber may be an identification, or participant identifier, identifiedas pertaining to the member by the marketing system. The marketingsystem may therefore recognize that the transaction involves the memberdue to the use of the financial card number. A skilled reader willrecognize that other identifications, or participant identifiers, may beutilized by a member, that such identifications may be stored by themarketing system, and that use of an identification, or participantidentifier, during a transaction may provide a means of identifying atransaction as involving a particular member. As described above, theidentification may be stored as a participant identifier by themarketing system.

As shown in FIG. 1, the marketing system may be operable in accordancewith a web-based computer program product that provides a loyalty engine10, linked to the web server. The loyalty engine may provide a marketingsystem interface to enable specific features, for example, such assurveys, incentive communications, data mining and other features.Transactions occurring between members and merchants, includingtransactions utilizing a point of sale facility 12, may be recorded orotherwise linked to data storage means. For example, a data storagemeans may be a database that may be included in one or more servers. Asanother example, a server farm may be included in the system of thepresent invention and one or more linked databases may be included as adata storage area. A skilled reader will recognize that the presentinvention may utilize a combination of stored data and real-time data(the real-time data may or may not be stored), and that both of thesetypes of data may be utilized by the data mining tool. The data miningtool 14 may be operable by the loyalty engine, and may be utilized bymembers, merchants, the administrator, an intermediary, or any thirdparty that is provided specific access to the data mining tool.

In one embodiment of the present invention, transaction linking utility16 may be utilized to compare transaction details regarding a merchantand/or member with stored data, for example, such as a member ormerchant profile. In this manner a transaction may be confirmed to bebetween a specific merchant and a specific member. Details of thetransaction may be stored in the data storage area as corresponding tothe merchant and/or member involved in the transaction. For example,details of the transaction may be stored in the member profile, merchantprofile, as historical transaction and/or as preferences.

The transaction linking utility may also be utilized to identify aspecific member that may be eligible for one or more merchant incentivesbased upon a transaction. For example, the transaction linking utilitymay utilize search information, member information including otherrecent transactions between the merchant and the member (e.g., assumemember is likely to engage in future transactions with the merchant),frequency of transactions between the merchant and the member (e.g.,member may be eligible for an incentive, which may be an increaseddiscount or other augmented incentive, based on either frequenttransactions with a merchant, or a particular number of pasttransactions with the merchant), and the amount of money spent in anytransaction between the member and the merchant (e.g., member may beeligible for an incentive, which may be an increased discount or otheraugmented incentive, based on an amount of money spent in a transactionwith the merchant), as well as any other post-transaction comments. Suchparameters may be incorporated into a rule and the transaction linkingutility may function in partnership with an analytics mode to identifymember eligibility for an incentive.

An incentive may be communicated to a member through a variety of means,including a communication to a mobile device (e.g., a text, twitter,etc.), an email, a mailing, a telephone call, or any other means. Theincentive may also be in many different forms, a sweepstake entry, adiscount, a donation to a charity, rewards points, a coupon, or anyother incentive form or combination of incentive forms (e.g., a donationto a charity and a discount, etc.).

In one embodiment of the present invention, search details regardingsearches by a participant for a merchant, a product, a community group,communication of an incentive, or other information, may also be trackedand stored by the marketing system. These search details may be utilizedby the transaction linking utility to link a transaction to a searchand/or an incentive. Search details may also be utilized to generateother information and/or reports, such as member preferences.

For example, a member may utilize the loyalty program engine of thepresent invention, accessed by the member through a web page, toinitiate a search for a particular merchant and/or product. Thetransaction linking utility may track certain aspects of the onlineactivity of the member, for example, such as the clicks by the member,the time the member spends on the merchant's web page, and any repeatclicks.

The present invention may involve a web-environment, or otherinter-connected networked environment, wherein an operator of themarketing system can capture browsing and searching activities of auser. The browsing and searching may be web-browsing and web-searchingactivities. Data collected relating to browsing and searching by a usermay include click activity, such as the webpages, specific information,or links clicked on by a user.

Data collected relating to browsing and searching may further includeany copying, tagging, pasting, marking, and/or highlighting ofinformation on a webpage or other page in the environment where thebrowsing and searching occurs, including any activity wherebyinformation is stored to a library, a wish list, or any otherinformation extraction activity. In one embodiment of the presentinvention the activities to copy, tag, paste, mark, highlight, store toa library, add to a wish list, or otherwise extract information mayindicate heightened interest in particular information. The marketingsystem may identify such activities as indicating search or browsingactivity that is more meaningful and therefore has as increasedsignificance over searching and browsing without any copying, tagging,pasting, marking, highlighting, storing to a library, adding to a wishlist, or otherwise extracting information. The increased level ofsignificance may be recognized by the present invention and applied toactivities of the marketing system, such as the analysis processes ofthe present invention.

In one embodiment of the present invention a means may be providedwhereby a user may store any copied, tagged, pasted, marked,highlighted, or otherwise extracted information for easy access by theuser in the marketing system environment. A skilled reader willrecognize that a number of means may be applied, such as the provisionof a wish list, a memo area, a library area, or any other means ofstoring specific information, preferably in an organized and easilyaccessible manner.

All browsing and searching related activities may be captured by themarketing system. In embodiments of the present invention the browsingand searching may occur through the use of a variety of communicationdevices, for example, such as a smart phone, a cell phone, a PDA, atablet, a laptop, or other types of communication means. The browsingand searching data may be analyzed by the marketing system. Analysis ofthe data relating to may reflect in particular browsing and searchingbehaviours of the user and/or member undertaking the browsing andsearching.

Embodiments of the present invention may include elements operable tosupport semantic searching. For example, a web search that is directedto a coat may be recognized by the marketing program to represent asearch for a coat, as well as a search for related relevant terms, suchas outerwear. In this manner the marketing system may recognize therelevance of particular searches and browsing broadly and may utilizethis recognition in other operabilities of the marketing system, such asthe determination of the likelihood or certainty of a match between asearch and a transaction, as described herein.

The browsing and searching behaviours of members and/or users mayfurther be identified as being related to other demographic or otherattributes of the members and/or users. For example, the browsing by amember may be recognized as having relevance to the behaviours of themember, so that certain merchants, products or services are indicated asbeing of interest to the member, and those interests may further berelated to a specific demographic or attributes of the member, such asthe age of the member, the location where the member lives or works, orany other demographic or attributes of the member. The browsing andsearching of a user who is not a member of the marketing program mayalso be analyzed, but the information to apply to this analysis may beless rich than the information applicable to the analysis of thebrowsing and searching by a member, due to the information available inthe member profile, which is not available for a user who is otherwiseunknown to the marketing system.

Information related to the searching and browsing and activitiespertaining to the searching and browsing may be captured for thepurposes of the marketing program for searching and browsing that occurswithin the marketing program environment, as well as some searching thatoccurs in the environment of a third party, for example, such as asearch provider or search engine operator. In embodiments of the presentinvention, searching and browsing facilities will be offered to membersand other users within the marketing environment. A skilled reader willrecognize the number of ways that searching and browsing facilities maybe offered in the marketing program environment and how the browsing andsearching information and related activity information may be capturedby the marketing program.

For example, a third party search provider may form an agreement withthe operator of the marketing program to allow the third party searchfacilities provided by the search provider to be integrated with themarketing program, so that the browsing and searching activitiesutilizing the third party search facilities may be accessed and utilizedwithin the marketing program. As another example, an agreement may beformed between a third party search provider and the operator of themarketing program to create and support a link between the marketingprogram and the search facilities of the search provider, whereby theaccess to and use of the search facilities appears seamless to the userand/or member undertaking searching or browsing. As yet another example,a marketing program may include searching and browsing facilities thatare part of the marketing program itself and are not provided by anythird party. In all of these examples, the searching and browsinginformation, including any behavioural or other activity relatedinformation, will be gathered by, or transferred to, the marketingprogram.

Alternatively, or in conjunction with any of the search facilitiesexamples provided herein, an agreement may be formed between one or morethird party search providers and the operator of the marketing program,whereby a user may undertake searching and browsing outside of themarketing program environment. The one or more third party searchproviders may transfer data relating to searching and browsing, and anyrelated activities, to the marketing program. The transferred data maybe analyzed to determine if the data relates to any of the members ormerchants of the marketing program. Data identified as relating tomembers or merchants of the marketing program may be stored in the datastorage area or otherwise utilized by the data mining tool, thetransaction linking utility and/or the analytics mode to undertake thefunctions of these elements of the present invention as describedherein.

In some embodiments of the present invention particular benefits may beoffered to merchants and members if the searching and browsing occurswithin the marketing program environment. Searching and browsingconducted from within the marketing program may not be limited to merelythe content available in the marketing program, or webpages of merchantsthat are participants of the marketing program. In embodiments of thepresent invention searching and browsing occurring within the marketingprogram may include linking to and otherwise accessing content and pagesavailable from the Internet generally.

A skilled reader will recognize that the benefits and advantages offeredby searching and browsing in the marketing program environment may offermotivation, or other encouragement to members to conduct searching andbrowsing in the marketing program environment. One such benefit isaccess to incentives provided in the course of searching and browsing,as described herein.

As another benefit, in one embodiment of the present invention amerchant may sponsor browsing and searching undertaken by a member, orby members having particular attributes or being within a particulardemographic. For example, a merchant may pay to have an advertisementdisplayed on a webpage that is accessed during searching and browsing.The advertisement may be for the merchant, for a product or service, orfor an incentive such as a donation to a community project based on apurchase or click activity during the searching and browsing. As anexample, a merchant located downtown in a city looking to increasepurchases by suburban members, may pay to have an incentive oradvertisement appear on a webpage while suburban members are searchingor browsing, and may by the activity of paying for the advertisementeffectively sponsor the browsing and searching of the member. A skilledreader will recognize the wide range of means by which a merchant maysponsor browsing, and how the sponsorship of browsing may be directedtowards an individual member, or to a group, category, or class ofmembers, such as members having like attributes or demographics.

Another benefit may be that searching and browsing occurring within themarketing program environment may cause the collection and generation ofa richer data collection regarding the searching and browsing and allactivities related thereto. This may occur because more data iscollected with the searching and browsing occurs within the marketingprogram environment than is collected when searching and browsing occursoutside of the marketing program environment. In particular, themarketing program may have the ability to control the level of datacollected relating to searching and browsing when the searching andbrowsing occurs within the marketing program environment. This mayassist in maximizing the collection of data achieved by the marketingprogram. The increase in the richness of data collected when searchingand browsing occurs in the marketing program environment may be anadvantage as it will enhance functions of elements of the marketingprogram, such as the data mining tool, transaction linking facility,analytics mode, and any analysis undertaken by any of these elements,for example, such as member behaviour analysis.

Browsing and searching within the marketing program may also have thebenefit of facilitating the ability of the marketing program to collectdata regarding the conclusion of browsing and searching sessions. Forexample, the analytics mode of the present invention may be operable todetermine the reason for the conclusion of browsing and searchingsessions. The analytics mode may be able to determine if a member loggedout of a browsing and searching session, if a member walked away from abrowsing and searching session, if a member navigated outside of themarketing program environment, or if a member ended the browsing andsearching session for some other reason. A skilled reader will recognizethe variety of determinations the analytics mode may make regarding thecause for the end of a browsing and searching session and how suchdeterminations may add to the behavioural data that the analytics modecan generate relating to members.

The benefits and advantages that may be created by searching andbrowsing being conducted within the marketing program environment mayhave other effects. For example, members may undertake to conduct themajority of their pre-transaction searching and browsing, and othersearching and browsing, in the marketing program environment. This mayhave an effect upon the amount of searching and browsing occurring inthird party search provider environments and thereby have a marketplaceeffect as members are motivated to search and browse in the marketingprogram environment due to the benefits achieved by doing so.Additionally, the significance of searches and browsing occurring in themarketing program may be recognized to indicate a greater interest onthe part of the user and/or member to undertake searches towards afuture purchase, instead of merely searching and browsing without anyintent to purchase. The intent to purchase may be affected by incentivesthat are either communicated to the user or member based upon the clickactivity and links accessed, or through advertisements appearing inareas accessed by the browsing and searching. Other factors may alsocause the intent to purchase level to be increased generally for membersundertaking searching and browsing in the marketing program environment.This increased intent to purchase could be applied as a factor in thedetermination of the likelihood or certainty that a search is linked toa later transaction.

In embodiments of the present invention, a qualified web environment maybe created. In such an embodiment the whole of the marketing programenvironment may be incentivized in one or more ways.

One or more incentives may be provided to, communicated to, or otherwisemade accessible by a user or member during browsing and searching. Theprovision of, communication of, or other access to, one or moreincentives may occur at a variety of points during the browsing andsearching. For example: one or more incentives may be displayed on awebpage as an advertisement; one or more incentives may be madeaccessible to a user or member upon a click upon the incentive; one ormore incentives may be communicated to a communication device of a useror member, such as a smart phone, a cell phone, a PDA, a tablet, alaptop, or other types of communication means; or other communicationsor incentives or access to incentives may be possible. The incentivesprovided to, communicated to, or made accessible by the user or membermay be of benefit to either the user or a community program, or anintermediary. For example: an incentive may be a coupon for redemptionat a merchants providing a benefit to a user or member; or an incentivemay be a donation to a community program that is made upon atransaction, or possibly even made based upon click activity or otherbrowsing or searching behaviours or activities. A skilled reader willrecognize that a variety of incentives may be provided, communicated ormade accessible to a user or member in a manner related to the browsingand searching activities or other behaviours.

In another embodiment incentives displayed to, provided to, communicatedto, made accessible to, or otherwise offered to the users or membersduring browsing or searching may be specific to the member or user. Forexample, an incentive may be one of several incentives that a merchantis offering to users or merchants. The determination to offer anyincentive to a member or user may be based upon any details relating tothe user or member recognized by the marketing program, such as:searching and browsing activities or other behaviours; attributes;demographic details; prior transaction history; prior searching history;semantic searching; or any other details which may be derived from useror member behaviours, activities or any stored information of themarketing program relevant to the user or member, or relevant to thebrowsing or searching activities or behaviours. The incentive maytherefore be chosen to be offered to the user or member so that theincentive is specific to the user or member or to the browsing andsearching. Providing an incentive to a user or member in a directedmanner may increase the likelihood that the incentive will be acceptedor otherwise redeemed by the user or member. For example, a user ormember may: accept that an incentive that is a donation be made to acommunity member; download an incentive that is a coupon and redeem thiseither at a merchant's online or bricks and mortar store; or mayotherwise utilize an incentive.

In embodiments of the present invention, incentives may be offered to auser or member during browsing and searching, as a result of browsingand searching, through other off-line media (e.g., newspapers, radio,television, etc.), at a merchant store location (including a bricks andmortar store or an online store, and based upon a transaction, as theresult of multiple transactions, or for any other reason); or at anyother location, including a community program location or event. Askilled reader will recognize the wide variety of incentives that may beoffered to users and members.

A skilled reader will recognize that while some of the examples in thisapplication discuss searching or browsing for a merchant, it is alsopossible to search or browse for a product or service. Therefore,searching and browsing activity may not only access a website of amerchant, but may instead access an online store, a catalogue, oranother web environment where information or a link regarding a productor service is made available. All of the functions of the marketingprogram related to searching and browsing may be instigated if a user ormerchant accesses a website environment other than a merchant website,or accesses merchant websites as well as other website environmentsduring searching and browsing.

In one embodiment of the present invention an incentive may not beoffered to a user or member during searching or browsing. However, asdiscussed herein, other benefits, and advantages offered by searchingand browsing from within the marketing program environment may motivateusers and members to conduct searching and browsing from within themarketing program environment.

As shown in FIG. 8, in one embodiment of the present invention a user80, such as a member, may utilize a communication means, such as alaptop, operable to access a search engine 82, such as a search engineaccessed via an online means (e.g., the Internet, an intranet, or otheronline means), to generate a query. For example, the member may query tofind a bike store located in a specific geographic region. The searchengine may be provided by the marketing program or may be otherwiselinked to the marketing program, so that the query results include atleast one bike store that is a store of a merchant of the marketingprogram. The user may choose the merchant's bike store, by clicking on alink to the merchant's bike store appearing in the query results, or byany other means of choosing the merchant's bike store provided by thecommunication device. As an alternative, the user may search for bikes,and link through a set of click activities to a particular bike that isa product of a merchant of the marketing program. For example, the bikemay appear in an online catalogue, or other webpage or form ofinformation communication.

As mentioned above, the user may further highlight information about themerchant's bike store, or a particular bike, or otherwise extractrelated data. This may cause the system to recognize a heightenedinterest in the bike on the part of the user than is indicated byclicking on links whereby the bike may be viewed, or other activitiesrelating to the bike. The indication of heightened interest in the bikemay be utilized by the marketing system in its determination of thelikelihood or level of certainty of a link between a search and a latertransaction, as described herein.

The marketing system may undertake steps to recognize that the user isaccessing the merchant's bike store online information, for example,such as accessing the merchant's bike store website. An incentive may beprovided by the merchant to the user, for example the incentive may becommunicated to a communication means specified by the user. Thecommunication means may be the same communication means the userutilizes to perform the query, or may be another communication meansindicated by the user. The communication means where the incentiveshould be sent may be set in the user's profile, or may be indicated bythe user while the user is accessing the marketing program, or themerchant's bike store information. For example, the incentive may be adiscount on the price of a bike communicated to a blackberry 84 asindicated by the user while the user is browsing the merchant's bikestore website.

Once the incentive is communicated to the user the user may take theincentive to the merchant's bike store 86. The user may utilize theincentive and redeem it for a discount on a bike 88 during a transactionat the merchant's bike store. Details regarding the transaction may betransferred to the marketing program 90. A further incentive may betriggered when the details regarding the transaction are received andprocessed by the marketing program. For example, the further incentivemay be an incentive such as a prize entry, or a donation 92 to acommunity program. The marketing program may match the transactiondetails to the search behaviour of the user if the user is a member ofthe marketing program. For example, based upon the transaction detailsthat indicate that the member acquired an incentive that is communicatedto users that access the member's bike store website, it can be assumedthat the transaction resulted from the user query.

A post-transaction survey 94 may be generated and communicated to theuser if the user is a member of the marketing program. For example, thesurvey may be communicated to the member the next time the member logsinto the marketing program, such that the survey appears as a pop-up onthe sign-in page after log-in, or the survey is accessible by a linkshown on the sign-in page, or so that the survey is available to amember that is signed into the marketing program via some other means.Alternatively, communicated to a communication means belonging to themember or a user that is not a member, and be available to the user onthat communication means, for example, such as a communication meansindicated by the member in the member's profile or a communication meansindicated by the user at another point, such as during the transaction,that is capable of accessing a communication, such as a blackberrymessage, an email, a text, or some other communication.

The post-transaction survey may be completed by the member and theinformation included in the survey may be processed by the marketingprogram. For example, the post-transaction survey information may beprocessed to indicate a link between the transaction and any earlieractivity, such as the query by the user, or any other activity. Theinformation in the post-transaction survey may be utilized to confirmthe transaction behaviour of a user. This information may be stored bythe marketing program and may be provided to the merchant, or otherparticipants of the marketing program, in a variety of forms upon avariety of events, for example, such as the generation of a report bythe merchant. The merchant may use this information to develop effectiveincentive programs, to evaluate the success of incentive programs, orfor other purposes.

In one embodiment of the present invention the time elapsed betweenmember online activity on a merchant web page, such as the query orsearch for the merchant's web page, and a transaction between the memberand the merchant may be evaluated by the transaction linking utility. Amaximum time lapse between a user's online search of a merchant and asubsequent transaction by the user at the merchant's store may berecognized by the marketing program. The maximum time lapse may be inputby the merchant, or may be generated by the marketing program, or may beotherwise set in the marketing program. For example, the maximum timelapse may be generated by the marketing program in accordance with themerchant type, the item that is searched, the merchant preferences, orany combination of these. Other rules for matching a query or search toa transaction may be set, stored and utilized by the marketing program.Such rules may be modified at any time. In particular, the rules may bemodified in accordance with the experience of a merchant. A merchant mayalso override the rules in specific circumstances.

The amount of time allowed for a maximum time lapse may further bemember specific. For example, the marketing program may recognize that alonger period of time elapses between a member undertaking searching andbrowsing activity and a transaction for the merchant or item searchedthan the maximum time lapse allows. This extended period of time mayindicate that a member has a reason which prohibits him or her fromtravelling to a store in a timely manner after searching and browsing anitem or merchant. For example, the member may be a professional who hasa work-schedule that prohibits frequent shopping. If the marketingprogram determines that transaction occurs following searching andbrowsing activity outside of the maximum time lapse for such a member,the marketing program may determine that there is still a likelihood ofa match between the searching and the transaction in the case of thisspecific member based on past member behaviour. Therefore, the marketingprogram may adjust the maximum time lapse to a longer period relative tothe historical data relating to the particular member.

The location of a member in relation to the location of the merchantstore may also be a factor that is considered when determining areasonable time lapse between the search and the transaction. Forexample, if the store is identified by the marketing program as being asignificant distance away form the location of the member, the maximumtime lapse may be extended to recognize searching and transactionsoccurring at periods in time more distant than the maximum time lapse ashaving a likelihood of matching.

The time and date of a search in relation to a transaction may also be afactor that is considered when determining a reasonable time lapsebetween the search and the transaction, in accordance with historicaldata relating to searches and transactions by a member. For example, asearch undertaken by a member on a Sunday night and a transactionoccurring on the following Saturday, or at another day that is beyondthe maximum time lapse, may be recognized as having a likelihood ofbeing a match if the member transaction history shows the member onlyshops on alternate weekends, or in another such pattern of time.

The type of communication devices utilized for searching and browsingprior to a transaction may also be a factor that is considered whendetermining whether there is a link between a search and a transaction.For example, if the search occurs on a communication device that isportable, such as a smart phone, a cell phone, a PDA, a tablet, or othertypes of portable communication means, this may indicate that the searchis made on the fly. This may further indicate that the search is relatedto a need that is recognized while a user or member is travelling.Therefore, the use of the device may indicate an increased intent topurchase a product or service, or to shop at a particular merchant'sstore. For example, the search may be conducted while a user or memberis already out shopping and has realized that they need another productor service. Therefore, the use of certain portable communication devicesto conduct a search may indicate a different level of purchase intentand may also indicate a different reasonable time lapse for a user ormember to make a transaction based upon a search. Such an application ofthe marketing program may further recognize the distance between theuser and/or member and the location of the merchant store that wassearched, or is where a searched product or service is available. If thedistance is determined to be significant than a longer period of timelapse between the search and a transaction may be deemed acceptable toindicate that the transaction is a result of the search.

As skilled reader will recognize that a variety of factors may beutilized to determine if a transaction is likely to have been the resultof a search. These factors may differ for specific members, based uponprior data collected by the marketing program and analysis of this datato indicate member behaviours. A skilled reader will also recognize therichness of rules and tools that the marketing program may utilize toundertake the analytics involved in matching transactions and searchesand indicating likelihoods or certainties of relationships therebetween.

In embodiments of the present invention a transaction may occur online(e.g., via a website) or offline (e.g., at a brick and mortar storelocation, or at another physical location where the merchant is sellingproducts or services such as, for example a kiosk, booth or otherlocation). The tracked information may be utilized by the transactionlinking utility to determine if the transaction represents a sale thatoccurred as a result of the search request by the member that resultedin the member arriving at the merchant's web page. A post-transactionsurvey may also be provided to verify that the transaction occurred as aresult of the search. A skilled reader will recognize that a variety ofvariables may be utilized by the transaction linking utility todetermine if a transaction occurs as result of a member's search on themarketing system, and that these variables may be governed by rules, orother means implemented by the marketing system.

In one embodiment of the present invention, the marketing program mayutilize the transaction linking utility to estimate matches between amember's, or other user's, searches, search engine click stream and themember's or user's transactions at the merchant. Such estimate ofmatches may be undertaken to produce variable degrees of certainty forthe match, or likelihood of a match between a search and a transaction.Examples of the certainty that may be indicated by varieties ofsearches, search engine click stream and transactions, include thefollowing:

-   -   a single search by member or a user of a merchant's website or        other information pertaining to that merchant that is followed        by a transaction at the merchant's store (either an online or        offline store) and a post-transaction survey is not provided        corresponding to the transaction may be considered to indicate a        low level of certainty that the transaction occurred as the        result of the search by the member or user of the merchant's        website or other information pertaining to that merchant or the        merchant's products and/or services;    -   a single search session by a member or a user of a merchant's        website or other information pertaining to that merchant that        includes multiple clicks on marketing system information (for        example, such as a member or user clicking to select a merchant        then clicking to accept an incentive offered by the merchant)        that is followed by a transaction and a post-transaction survey        is not provided corresponding to the transaction may be        considered to indicate a moderate level of certainty that the        transaction occurred as the result of the search by the member        or user of the merchant's website or other information        pertaining to that merchant or the merchant's products and/or        services;    -   multiple related searches (for example, such as searches of the        website or other information relating to the same merchant        undertaken by the same member or user across multiple search        sessions) occurring prior to a transaction between the member        (or user) and the merchant that was searched and a        post-transaction survey is not provided corresponding to the        transaction may be considered to indicate a moderate level of        certainty that the transaction occurred as the result of the        search by the member or user of the merchant's website or other        information pertaining to that merchant or the merchant's        products and/or services;    -   any search by a member or a user of a merchant's website or        other information pertaining to that merchant, the search being        followed by a transaction that a post-transaction survey is        provided for that confirms that the transaction occurred as a        result of the search may be considered to indicate a high level        of certainty that the transaction occurred as the result of the        search by the member or user of the merchant's website or other        information pertaining to that merchant or the merchant's        products and/or services;    -   a transaction between a member or user and a merchant that is        not preceded by any search by the member or user of the        merchant's website or other information pertaining to that        merchant may be considered to indicate that the transaction did        not occur as the result of any search by the member or user of        the merchant's website or other information pertaining to that        merchant or the merchant's products and/or services; and    -   a transaction between a member or user and a merchant that is        preceded by a search which included the member or user        highlighting or otherwise extracting information regarding a        product or service that is part of the transaction may be        considered to indicate a moderate level of certainty that the        transaction occurred as the result of the search by a member or        user pertaining to that merchant or the merchant's products        and/or services.

In one embodiment of the present invention, it may be possible for themarketing system to recognize that items purchased with a searched itemmay also be linked to the original search. For example, a user or membermay search for a coat sold by the merchant. Later the user or member maypurchase the coat through a transaction at the merchant's store. Otheritems may be purchased in the same transaction by the member or user.The other items purchased with the coat may be recognized by themarketing program to have occurred as a result of the search for thecoat. Tracking the purchase of the extra items besides the coat mayprovide a means of capturing information related to the purchasingbehaviours of the user or member purchasing the coat and the otheritems. This information may be utilized for the purpose of otheranalyses conducted by the present invention.

As another example, the search may involve the communication of anincentive to a member. In this embodiment of the present invention, amember, or other participant, may login to the marketing system website.The member may be considering purchasing a particular item, such as abicycle, and consequently may utilize a search option to look formerchants who are members of the marketing system and are bicyclesellers. The member may also search bicycles, and the search may involvemerchants of the marketing system. The present invention may recognizethat the search occurred (as described in this application the searchmay occur online through a search provider that is linked to themarketing system, or a search provider that is not linked to themarketing system, or by other search means). The results of the searchmay either present an incentive to the member on the webpage, or maycause an incentive to be communicated to the member by some other means,such as to a member's mobile device, to the member's email address, etc.If the member later purchases the bicycle, either online or at thephysical location of the merchant's store, and redeems the incentive,this information will also be stored in the present invention datastorage area. The transaction linking utility may be utilized to provideresults that indicate that the search for the bicycle and the purchaseof the bicycle occurred within a period of time that would suggest alink between the search/incentive and the purchase.

Identification of the link between the search/incentive and the purchasemay indicate that the incentive may have influenced the transaction.Data reflecting that the incentive influenced the transaction mayidentify the incentive as successful to cause the transaction. Such datamay be utilized evaluate the overall success of a particular incentive.An evaluation regarding the success of a particular incentive may beuseful when either the merchant or the marketing system considerssuggestions for possible new incentives.

In one embodiment of the present invention, the search for a particularproduct may occur outside of the marketing system. For example, thesearch provider operating the system where the search occurred outsideof the marketing system may make use of an Application ProgramInterface, or another electronic data transfer means to send informationto the marketing system. The marketing program may process theinformation received from the search provider. It may also be possiblethat multiple search providers may operate within the marketing system,and that multiple search engines may be used by users or members outsideof the marketing system and that the search information relating tothese search providers and search engines may be transferred to themarketing system for processing.

In another embodiment of the present invention, the incentive offered toa member may be dependent upon the existence of any link between themarketing system and the search provider. This means that more than oneincentive may be developed to be offered to members. A member will berequired to provide one or more identifications, or participantidentifiers, to the search, whereby the search will recognize the useras a member of the marketing system. In one embodiment of the presentinvention the provision of one or more identifications pertaining to amember may be facilitated by the marketing system in a manner wherebythe provision of the one or more identifications appears as seamless tothe member utilizing the marketing system.

Should a member utilize a search provider that is not connected, orotherwise linked, to the marketing system to search a product, themarketing system may cause a particular incentive to be communicated tothe member pertaining to the purchase of the searched product and/orother products. However, should a member utilize a search provider thatis connected, or otherwise linked to the marketing system, such as, forexample, a search provider accessible from one or more of the marketingsystem webpages, a search provider that is affiliated with the marketingsystem, or a search provider that is otherwise connected or linked tothe marketing system, a different incentive may be offered to the memberpertaining to the purchase of the searched product and/or otherproducts.

As an example, use of a search provider that is not linked to themarketing system may result in the provision of an incentive that is aprice reduction of 10%, whereas use of a search provider that is linkedand/or connected to the marketing program may result in the provision ofan incentive that is a price reduction of 30% and/or a donationequivalent to 15% of the price of the product to a community program. Insome embodiments of the present invention the incentive provided as aresult of a member utilizing a search provider that is connected orotherwise linked to the marketing system may offer greater rewards tothe member than the incentive provided as a result of a member utilizinga search provider that is not connected or otherwise linked to themarketing system. A skilled reader will recognize that a variety ofincentives may be offered both to members that utilize a search providerlinked or connected to the marketing program as well as to member thatutilize a search provider that is not linked or connected to themarketing program.

An incentive may also be communicated to a member, or other participant,without a search being undertaken. Incentives may be displayed on awebpage or communicated to a member by another means, such as via amobile device, email, through the mail, announcement at an event themember attends, or any other means. The marketing system may storeinformation indicating the date and/or time of the communication of theincentive to the member. The marketing system may further be able toidentify the redemption of the incentive. Should the redemption of theincentive meet particular criteria in relation to the communication ofthe incentive, such as, for example the redemption of the incentive,which may be in conjunction with a transaction, occurs within aspecified period of time after the communication of the incentive to themember, then the marketing system may identify the transaction as beinginfluenced by the incentive.

A skilled reader will recognize the variety of searches that may befacilitated by the marketing system and the variety of results, and usesthereof, that may be facilitated by the transaction linking utility, thedata mining tool and may involve the analytic mode. A skilled readerwill further recognize the variety of data rules that may be set toindicate a link between a transaction and other member behaviours oractivities, such as searching for an item online.

In one embodiment of the present invention an analytic mode may beengaged to function in connection with the transaction linking utilityto produce reports, reviews or other feedback for participantsinterested in identifying instances where a transaction occurred as aresult of a search by a member undertaken by the marketing program.

As shown in FIG. 2, the system may be linked to a variety ofcommunication means 20, for example, such as a smart phone, a cellphone, a PDA, a tablet, a laptop, or other type of communication means,whereby details may be uploaded and downloaded from the loyalty engine.For example, the system may be linked to a smart phone belonging to amember, whereby incentives may be disseminated to the member via thesmart phone. In this manner a coupon 22 may be disseminated to a memberand communicated by the loyalty engine to the member's smart phone. Thecoupon may further include a bar code, a unique reward identifier, orother intelligent information.

Additionally, information entered into a communication means, such as asmart phone, may be transferred to the loyalty engine and ultimatelystored in the data storage area. For example, a survey may bedisseminated to a member whereby the survey is available to the memberon the member's smart phone. Responses to the survey made by the membervia the smart phone may be transferred to the loyalty engine and therebystored in the data storage area. A skilled reader will recognize thatdata may be transferred to and from the loyalty engine, to merchants,members, intermediaries or any other third party.

Administrator Registration, Interface and Functionalities

In one embodiment of the present invention, the marketing program may behosted by an administrator. Said administrator may be an individual oran organization. Access to the marketing program, including access tosome and/or all data may be provided to an administrator. Generally theadministrator access to the marketing system may differ from accessprovided to others: access to the marketing system, including access toanonymized data may be provided to merchants and members; and limitedaccess to the marketing program may be provided to third parties and/orintermediaries. The marketing system may be operable to allow anadministrator to input particular data, including data pertaining tocommunity programs.

The administrator may undertake a search for community programs. Thissearch may utilize information available via the Internet, otherdatabases, telephone services (such as those provided by somemunicipalities, media outlets, etc.), and other data sources. Theadministrator may also be provided information regarding communityprograms by third parties.

All details relating to the community programs may be stored in the datastorage area of the marketing program. The data mining tool may beutilized to provide reports or lists providing information related tothe community programs, for example, such as a list of communityprograms in a specific location (e.g., a town, a city or a borough,etc.).

In one embodiment of the present invention, the administrator mayutilize the administrator access facilities of the marketing system toprovide information to a merchant regarding community programsoccurring, or about to occur, in a location nearby to one or more of themerchant's stores, or information regarding members. A merchant mayutilize this information to develop incentives relating to one or moreof the merchant's stores. The incentive may be a coupon, sales discount,give away, sweepstakes entry, donation to a community program, or anyother incentive. The incentive or information regarding the incentivemay be disseminated to a member.

The marketing system may also be operable to allow the administrator togenerate lists, reviews, reports or other information to be provided toprospective merchants, members and/or intermediaries to cause them toconsider registering with the marketing program.

In some embodiments of the present invention, a fee may be charged forany request for information, lists, reviews, reports generated by anadministrator. A skilled reader will recognize the variety of types offees that could be charged, such as, for example a fee for each request,a fee per lines on a report, and other types of fees.

Merchant Registration, Interface and Functionalities

A merchant may join the marketing program by registering. A merchant maybe an online merchant, a merchant having one or more brick and mortarlocations, or any other merchant. A merchant may identify the locationof any bricks and mortar locations to the marketing system along withother merchant profile information. Merchant profile information may beprovided to the marketing system at the time of registration as well asat points in time after the initial registration occurs.

A registration interface may be provided to the merchant via a web page,via a mobile device, or via any other means. The merchant informationmay include a variety of information, for example, such as a merchantparticipant identifier, the location of the merchant's store(s), themerchant's target clientele, etc. The merchant information may allow themarketing program to link a financial card or other billing system tothe merchant.

As shown in FIG. 3, a merchant 36 may register with the marketingprogram of the present invention to become a participant. Registrationmay be facilitated by one or more registration means as described inmore detail below. Registration may further occur through an interface32, for example, such as a web page, etc. Information regarding themerchant, for example, such as the merchant's name, its store locations,its website and web page information, and other details may be providedby the merchant at registration, or at any later point, and stored inthe data storage area 38. A merchant may develop merchant incentives,and may communicate these to members through a variety of means 39,including the marketing system web-pages, any merchant and/orintermediary web pages, social media (e.g., web pages, Facebook™,Twitter™, etc.), local media (e.g., radio advertisements, print media,television broadcasts, etc.) and through relationships with communityprograms (e.g., the community program promotes the merchant, forexample, such as through a link from the community program website tothe merchant's website, use of the merchant's logo or brand on communityprogram materials, announcements of merchant incentives at a communityprogram event, etc.). A skilled reader will recognize the variety ofoptions that may be used to communicate an incentive to participantsand/or third parties.

In one embodiment of the present invention, the marketing program mayprovide an automated online boarding means or a manual boarding means.For example, a merchant having an existing registered merchantidentification with another pre-registered financial program may beprovided with a registration interface by the present marketing program,for example, such as a web page. The interface may include a meanswhereby merchant transactional information and preferences may beimported from the pre-registered financial program to the marketingprogram. The imported information may be stored in the data storage areaas part of the merchant profile.

As an example, the imported information may include the merchantidentification (such as an identification number), credit cardinformation, or automated clearing house billing information alreadylinked to a database. Additionally, the one or more forms of paymentused with the pre-registered financial program may also be linked to themarketing program as tokens. Said tokens may be used to tracktransactions made with the associated forms of payment.

The information regarding the location of one or more bricks and mortarlocations of the merchant may be utilized to determine relationshipsbetween one or more community programs and the merchant, in particularany merchant location in the vicinity of the community program. The datamining tool, and in some instances the analytic mode, of the presentinvention may be utilized to provide a list of community programsoccurring in the same location as one or more of the merchant'slocations. A merchant may request a more general list as well, showingall community programs in a city, province, country, or otherinformation.

A merchant may also request a list of members, based on a variety ofcriteria, including proximity of the location of a member to one or morelocations of a merchant, member preferences, member age, or other memberinformation. A skilled reader will recognize the variety of criteriathat may be applied to a member search undertaken by a merchant, suchas, for example, demographic or preference information as reflected inthe marketing system data stored in the data storage area. Thisinformation may be utilized to determine the members that an incentivewill be communicated to. The information may also be used to create newincentives.

In some embodiments of the present invention, a fee may be charged forany request for information or search submitted to the marketing systemand/or administrator by a merchant. A skilled reader will recognize thevariety of types of fees that could be charged, such as, for example afee for each request, a fee per lines on a report, and other types offees.

In one embodiment of the present invention, the data mining tool, and insome instances the analytic mode, may be utilized to provide suggestionsof possible new incentives to merchants. The transaction linkingfacility may be utilized to provide analysis or evaluations that mayalso be applied by the data mining tool or analytic mode to generate newincentives and suggestions of new incentives for merchants. This featureof the present invention may utilize any of the data and/or informationin the data storage area, it may also: recognize incentives utilized bymerchants in the past; recognize the success of some past incentives;evaluate the success of an incentive and the community program that theincentive is to be used with; and further incorporate other informationand criteria. The result may be one or more suggestions of incentivesthat a merchant may utilize at a particular point in time. It may be atthe discretion of the merchant to adopt and utilize one or more of thesuggested incentives, or not to adopt or utilize any of the suggestedincentives. For example, a merchant may allow automatic approval ofsystem generated incentives, and whereby the marketing system undertakesthe approval of system generated incentives. A skilled reader willrecognize that a variety of criteria and information may be utilized bysuch a feature of the present invention.

The incentive may provide an inducement for the member, or othercustomers, to visit the merchant's store locations (or online website)where the incentive is offered and redeemable. The merchant may therebyincrease the number of customers, the notoriety of the merchant's store,sales, goodwill, etc. The incentive may also produce a benefit for thecommunity program if it is linked to a community program by, increasingawareness of the community program, increasing attendance at a communityprogram, increasing donations to the community program, etc. Specificbenefits accruing to any of a community program, merchant, member and/orany intermediary may be recognized by a report, review, results, list,etc., provided by the data mining tool, or the transaction linkingutility in some instances.

Incentives may be created to be redeemed upon a variety of events and/oractivities. For example, an incentive may be provided to a member and/oran intermediary based upon a transaction. In this example, the incentivemay be provided upon a transaction occurring, or may be provided toattempt to cause a transaction to occur. Such an incentive may be adiscount on a purchase price of a product or service to a member, agive-away to a member, a sweepstakes entry and/or a donation to acommunity program.

In one embodiment of the present invention, it may be possible for theincentive that is provided to a participant based upon a transaction tobe different depending on various circumstances. For example, theincentive may be different for a participant who has had frequenttransactions and/or recent transactions (e.g. frequent and/or recenttransactions with a merchant, or group of merchants, or frequenttransactions as a marketing program participant), than the incentiveprovided to a participant who is making a first transaction, makesinfrequent transactions, or has not made a recent transaction. It mayalso be possible for a different incentive to be provided toparticipants based upon the total amount of the transaction (e.g. themoney spent in the course of the transaction). Yet another possibilitymay be that a different incentive may be provided to a participant basedupon the time of day when a participant makes a transaction. Basing anincentive on the time of day may help a merchant with products orservices near the end of the business day to encourage the purchase ofthose products or services by participants. A different, augmentedincentive may also be offered based upon other criteria, such as, forexample volunteer hours with a community program, etc. A skilled readerwill recognize that a variety of other events or activities may causedifferent incentives to be communicated to a participant.

As another example, incentives may also be provided based upon thecompletion of a survey by a participant. Such an incentive may be: acoupon that is electronically, or otherwise, provided to a participantafter a survey is completed; a donation that is made to a communityprogram upon the completion of a survey; and/or entry in a sweepstakes.It may be possible that more than one incentive may be provided to oneor more participants upon the completion of a survey. It may also bepossible for particular post-transaction surveys to even result indifferent incentives being provided to one or more participants inaccordance with the answers provided in the survey. For example, theresponse to an experience rating question (e.g. a request to rate anexperience as excellent, satisfactory or poor) could result in aparticipant responding that his or her experience was poor may receive adifferent incentive than a participant responding that his or herexperience was excellent. In particular, a participant who has rankedhis or her experience as poor on several post-transaction surveys (asmay be recognized by use of the data mining tool of the presentinvention searching for data in historical surveys) may receive adifferent, augmented incentive. A skilled reader will recognize that avariety of other incentives may be provided to participants upon thecompletion of a survey.

As yet another example, incentives may be provided based upon a memberentering a specific geographical location and/or zone. Such an incentivemay be provided to one or more participants upon a member entering theparking lot of a shopping centre, or any other geographical locationand/or zone. The incentive may be related to the geographical locationand/or zone, such as, for example a coupon for a merchant near to thezone, or a donation to a community program near the location. A skilledreader will recognize that a variety of other incentives may be providedupon a member entering a specific geographical location and/or zone. Askilled reader will further recognize that incentives may be provided toone or more participants based upon other events or activities as well.

The marketing system of the present invention may be operable by themerchant to generate incentives, to track transactions, and to provideother information relating to participants and community programs. Themarketing system of the present invention may further be operable by themerchant to generate analytic information providing an evaluation of thesuccess of past incentives and other activities of the merchant.

Intermediary Registration, Interface and Functionalities

In one embodiment of the present invention, one or more intermediariesmay register with the marketing system and thereby become participants.In one embodiment of the present invention, a participant, andparticularly an intermediary, may be a search provider, financial cardprovider, one or more advertising associates, one or more charities, oneor more public or private interest groups, marketing specialists, one ormore community programs, or other groups or individuals.

Particular participants may offer unique and specific means ofcommunicating an incentive to participants and/or third parties.Intermediaries may either work with such participants, or may provideunique and specific means of communicating an incentive to participantsand/or third parties themselves.

In one embodiment of the present invention, particular marketing programaccess may be configured to benefit one or more intermediaries. Theaccess provided to intermediaries, or groups of intermediaries, maydiffer. For example, an advertising associate may be granted access toparts of the marketing program that are necessary for the advertisingassociate to work with a merchant to produce an incentive. As anotherexample, a marketing program interface may be configured to provideaccess to a charity to part of the marketing program. That interface mayenable a member, or other participant, to select one or more charitiesand allocate contributions or donations to a charity, for example, suchas in percentages or contribution tiers (where the first X dollarsbenefit supported organization A, the next Y dollars benefit supportedorganization Y, etc.), or a combination thereof, to one or morecharities. A skilled reader will recognize that the present inventionmay involve a variety of other contribution priority schemes and/or avariety of marketing program interfaces to provide specific access toparticular intermediaries.

In an embodiment of the present invention, one or more intermediariesmay also disseminate intermediary affiliate information to the marketingprogram, or information regarding the marketing program and/or anymerchant incentive to its affiliates. For example, an intermediary maysend direct mail to its affiliates, which may represent its existingcontributor base if the intermediary is a charity, or financial cardholders if the intermediary is a financial card provider. A skilledreader will recognize that the affiliates of an intermediary may bedifferent groups in accordance with the type of intermediary. The directmail may contain a website address and a participant identifier whichmay be generated for and associated with the intermediary by themarketing program when the intermediary registers with the marketingprogram. Upon receipt of the direct mail, an affiliate may navigate tothe website address, which may be a portal to the marketing program. Theaffiliate may thereby be granted temporary, and possibly limited accessto the marketing system for a specific purpose.

The direct mailing from the intermediary may also provide the affiliatewith the opportunity to register as a member of the marketing system.During the registration process, the affiliate may enter the participantidentifier. The act of entering the participant identifier may cause themarketing program to automatically configure the new member'spreferences in accordance with rules created to cause specificoperations upon the entry of the participant identifier. For example,entry of the participant identifier may cause the member's preferencesto include information to provide for specific interaction between theintermediary and the new member, the new member and a merchant, the newmember and a community program, or any other interaction. Theinteraction may include a contribution by the member of certain benefitsto the intermediary, or to another participant, at a specific period intime, or upon a specific event. The entry of the participant identifiermay further have the result that it signals to the marketing programthat new member's personal information may be transferred via anelectronic link to information regarding the new member available fromanother data source. The transferred information may be stored as partof the new member's profile in the data storage area.

In one embodiment of the present invention, at the point of registrationwith the marketing program, a member may identify a relationship to theintermediary. In another embodiment of the present invention, theintermediary may post a list of validated people affiliated with itsorganization and the marketing system may match any registering memberto an intermediary list.

Members Registration, Interface and Functionalities

Individuals may register with the marketing program to become members.Registration could be facilitated by one or more registration means. Forexample, the individual may already be associated with a pre-registeredprogram, such as, for example a financial program or a program of anintermediary whereby the individual is an affiliate of the intermediary.The pre-registered program may have one or more pieces of personal(identification) or demographic information associated with theindividual available in a data source. A registration interface may beprovided, this may include a page, for example, such as a web page, apage sent to an individual's mobile device (e.g., such as a smart phone,etc.), etc., whereby the individual approves joining the marketingprogram of the present invention. The registration interface may includea means for importing all personal or demographic information andpreferences from the pre-registered program to the marketing program ofthe present invention.

In one embodiment of the present invention, if the pre-registeredprogram involves one or more identifications the one or moreidentifications may also be transferred to the marketing program. Forexample, if the pre-registered program is a financial program one ormore forms of payment linked to the pre-registered financial programcould also be linked with the marketing program of the present inventionto enable the marketing program to track transactions made with thoseforms of payment. In this manner the one or more forms of payment, orother identifications, may provide one or more participant identifierslinked to the new member for use by the marketing program. Allregistration data, including the one or more participant identifiers,may be stored in the data storage area, and may be accessible by thedata mining tool.

As shown in FIG. 3, in another embodiment of the present invention, anindividual 30 may register with the marketing program of the presentinvention by providing, through an interface 32, for example, such as aweb page, a page provided on an individual's mobile device (e.g., suchas a smart phone, etc.), or other interface, the individual's personalor demographic information. This information may include theindividual's gender, the individual's age, the individual's location(e.g., home, workplace, or other location), as well as other demographicor personal information. The information may be stored in the datastorage area and may be stored as a member profile. The marketingprogram may generate a participant identifier number for the new member.All registration data, including the participant identifier, may bestored in the data storage area 38 of the present invention, and may beaccessible by the data mining tool.

In one embodiment of the present invention, a participant identifiercard may be sent to the new member bearing the participant identifiernumber. A skilled reader will recognize that the participant identifiercard need not be a physical card, but could be any form of paymentdevice, including for example an RFID chip, a mobile phone, etc.depending on, for example, the supporting infrastructure of merchants.

The marketing program of the present invention may be operable toreceive information from the member, at the point of registration, aswell as at any other point while the member is a member of the marketingprogram of the present invention. Profile data may be collected by wayof a variety of means, for example, such as a web page, a mobile device,a survey, transactions between members and merchants, or any othermeans. Said profile data may include a set of rich data includinginformation that is additional information to that which is gathered atthe point of initial registration. Said rich data may include a varietyof information, for example, such as a list of the social networks themember is linked to, authentication information for those socialnetworks (e.g. member names, passwords, etc.), preferred supportedorganizations and merchants (as described more fully below), transactiondetails for transactions undertaken by the member, survey data, anyreviews generated by the member (e.g., merchant reviews, productreviews, or other reviews), updated location data, search query data ofsearches undertaken by the member, or other information. The informationmay be relevant to enabling optimal usage of the marketing program.

In one embodiment of the present invention, the data mining tool may beoperable to identify members who may be inclined to utilize incentivesdefined by merchants. This identification process may occur inaccordance with the rules of the marketing program and/or the analyticmode, and may be based on administrative criteria, for example, such asdemographic targeting of incentives.

The loyalty engine of the present invention may be operable tocommunicate the merchant incentive to the identified members.

A skilled reader will recognize that the architecture of the marketingprogram may enable shielding of the personal information of all membersfrom individual merchants. Shielding may be the result of theapplication of a security system linked to or otherwise integrated withthe architecture of the marketing program and in particular with thetransaction linking facility, the data mining tool and the data storagearea. The marketing program administrator may be in control of thepersonal information and may be the sole party having direct access tosuch personal information. The personal information of a member may beaccessed by the data mining tool, but any review, report, list, resultsor other data generated by the transaction linking facility, data miningtool or analytic mode, may be devoid of identifiable personalinformation, for example, any results of the data mining tool may beanonymized.

The marketing system of the present invention may be operable to providemember with access to the Internet and access to one or more searchengines. Said search engines may be operable to support searching by themember. The member may search for merchants or products. The searchengines may be available through the marketing system, or outside of themarketing system. Search engines outside of the marketing system may belinked or otherwise connected to the marketing system. Any searchesundertaken by the member utilizing a search engine may be tracked by themarketing program so that details of the search are collected by themarketing system, or if the search engine is outside the marketingprogram details of the search may be transferred to the marketingprogram due to the link or other connection between the search engineand the marketing program. Details of the search may be stored in thedata storage area. The search information may be utilized by thetransaction linking facility to identify transactions based on searchesand/or transaction based on incentives, as described in thisapplication.

The loyalty engine of the present invention may be operable to permit amember to create a review of a merchant or product. The loyalty enginemay further be operable to permit other participants to create reviewsas well. The reviews may be created based upon a template, or inresponse to rules of the loyalty engine, so that the member views atemplate, or a set of questions and merely responds to the template orquestions. The template or questions may be accompanied by an option forfree-form creation of a review, such as a space where the member maytype a review, or portion of a review. Reviews may be available throughthe marketing program so that other participants may access the reviews.For example, reviews may be available on an electronic bulletin-board,via specific webpages, via a search, or through any other means. In someembodiments of the present invention a member may be provided with anincentive or other reward by the marketing system upon the creation of areview.

In one embodiment of the present invention, one or more questions on asurvey may be dynamic and may be generated to be specific to a member.For example, one or more survey questions to be included on a survey tobe provided to a specific member may be generated based on data relatingto that specific member stored in, or accessible by, the marketingprogram. As an another example, one or more survey questions to beincluded on a survey to be provided to a group, class or category ofmembers (for example, such as a group of boarded members, or othergroups, classes or categories of member) may be generated based on datarelating to the specific group, class or category of member stored in,or accessible by, the marketing program. Still another example, one ormore survey questions may be generated to gather information regardingbehaviour of users or members and may be used as a source of informationthat provides a richer underpinning to consumer behaviour analytics ofthe marketing program, in particular behaviour relating to a transactionthat may facilitate the analysis of the likelihood of a link betweenbehaviour of a member or a user, such as a search activity, and atransaction. A skilled reader will recognize the other uses of surveyquestions directed to extract information that may be analyzed toproduce behavioural data relating to a member or a user.

Yet another example of specifically generated survey questions mayinclude questions relating to a search undertaken by a member or userthat the marketing program matches to the transaction with a low,moderate, high or other level of certainty, as described above. Asanother example of specifically generated survey questions these mayinclude questions generated after a member provides negative reviewregarding a merchant. A survey generated upon a subsequent transactioninvolving the member and the merchant may include questions that aredevised to indicate whether the experience of the member during thetransaction with the merchant improved during the subsequent transactionas compared to the transaction for which the member provided a negativereview.

In embodiments of the present invention, the marketing program may beoperable to support contribution priority schemes. The followingrepresent examples of possible contribution priority schemes that mayprovided in embodiments of the present invention. As one example, themarketing program interface may be operable to allow a member to modifyhis or her contribution preferences either at any time, or afterparticular periods of time. Another example is that the marketingprogram interface may be operable so that a community program, afoundation or other disseminating entity may register as an intermediaryof the present invention. A member may provide a benefit (e.g., adonation or other benefit) to one or more intermediaries (e.g., thecommunity program, the foundation or other disseminating entity), eitherdirectly, or through a merchant.

For example, as shown in FIG. 4, the benefit may be generated based upona transaction between a member 41 and a merchant 40 in accordance with amerchant incentive, such as an incentive that provides a donation to anintermediary based upon a transaction. Once the benefit is received bythe intermediary 42 (e.g., the community program, the foundation orother disseminating entity) the intermediary may either accept thebenefit, for example if the intermediary is a community program. Or, ifthe intermediary is not a community program or other group that is toreceive any benefit, then the intermediary may disseminate portions of,or the whole of, the benefit to one or more organizations 44, forexample, such as charities, community programs, etc. The intermediarymay also determine in some instances to redirect portions of, or thewhole of, the benefit to an organization such as an emergency relieforganization. The decision to redirect the benefit, or portions thereof,in this manner may be due to an emergency (e.g., such as the Haitiearthquake). Information outlets 48, for example, such as the media andsocial networks, etc., may disseminate information about the support forthe organization 46 and build goodwill for the merchant.

In another embodiment of the present invention, a member may choose tomatch one or more donations that are generated based upon transactionswith merchant stores. For example, the member may indicate to themarketing program that: all donations based upon transactions involvingthe member should be automatically matched by the member through theoperation of the marketing program; that donations based upontransactions involving the member pertaining to one or more specificcommunity programs, to one or more specific merchants, or to allcommunity programs and/or merchants, during a specific period of time(such as during a period of emergency, during a particular campaign of acommunity program, or during any other period of time) should be matchedautomatically by the member through the operation of the marketingprogram; or that donations based on transactions between the member andone or more specific merchants should be automatically matched by themember through the operation of the marketing program. A skilled readerwill recognize that other options for a member provide a matchingdonation through the operation of the marketing program may also bepossible.

In yet another embodiment of the present invention, an intermediary maychoose to match donations generated in one or more regions. For example,the intermediary may indicate to the marketing program that: alldonations based upon transactions involving all merchants should beautomatically matched by the intermediary through the operation of themarketing program; that donations based upon transactions pertaining toone or more specific community programs, to one or more specificmerchants, or to all community programs and/or merchants, during aspecific period of time (such as during a period of emergency, during aparticular campaign of a community program, or during any other periodof time) should be matched automatically by the intermediary through theoperation of the marketing program; or that donations based ontransactions involving one or more specific merchants should beautomatically matched by the intermediary through the operation of themarketing program. A skilled reader will recognize that other optionsfor an intermediary to provide a matching donation through the operationof the marketing program may also be possible.

As yet another example, the marketing program interface may provide tothe member one or more intermediary codes that, when entered by themember into the interface, could automatically configure particulardissemination rules whereby one or more specific benefits may accrue toone or more intermediaries, charities, community programs, etc. Thedissemination rules may be recognized by the loyalty engine.

A skilled reader will recognize that these examples are not exhaustive,and other possible contribution priority schemes and specific interfacesfor particular intermediaries may be provided. The contribution priorityschemes of the present invention may be operable to produce atransparent, accountable transfer of donations or other benefits.

Survey, Review, List, Report, Etc. Generator

To aid in the collection of data stored in the data storage area, andthe generation of reviews, reports, lists, results and other datagenerated by the transaction linking utility, data mining tool oranalytic mode, the loyalty engine may generate surveys to be completedby members or other participants of the marketing program of the presentinvention. Such surveys may provide questions specifically created toderive information directed to the function of the marketing system, toparticular transactions or transactions generally, to any merchant,intermediary or community programs, or to any other information relevantto the marketing system. Such surveys may be provided when a participantregisters with the marketing system, or at any other point in time, suchas after a transaction, following a merchant incentive offering, etc.Surveys may be provided to participants by a variety of means, includingthrough web-pages, upon logging into the marketing program, via a mobiledevice, as a printed survey at the merchant location, or via any othermeans.

In one embodiment of the present invention, a post-transaction surveymay be provided to a member involved in a transaction. Thepost-transaction survey may include a variety of questions, but mayparticularly include questions regarding the influences that led to thetransactions. For example, was the transaction influenced by anyincentive offered by the merchant. A skilled reader will recognize thevariety of questions that may be included in a post-transaction survey.

Reviews, reports, lists, results, etc., based on the surveys can begenerated for merchants. For example, survey results that indicateparticularly good or bad service by a specific merchant, or particularlygood or bad quality of a product, or any other information, may beidentified by the data mining tool and the information may besummarized, or consolidated into a review of the merchant, product, orother element to be reviewed. In this manner reviews may beautomatically generated by the marketing system, alternatively reviewsmay be generated upon request by a participant or third party. Reviewsmay also be created by participants, based upon a template or in afree-form manner. Another example of a use of such information is thatwhen other members are searching for a merchant these members may accessor be provided with a copy of a review regarding a particular merchant.A skilled reader will recognize that the use of reviews, reports, lists,results, and other documents may be wide and varied.

Local, Regional and/or National Applications

In some embodiments of the present invention, the marketing programs mayoperate to produce local benefits, regional benefits and/or nationalbenefits to the participants. For example, the present invention may beoperable to permit a member to participate the marketing program in onelocation, region, nation, etc. Yet the present invention may furtherpermit a member who is travelling, relocating, or is otherwiseinterested in another location, to participate, automatically, or uponrequest, in the marketing program in another location, region, nation,etc. Merchants that have an international, national, multi-regional, ormulti-locational presence may be associated with the marketing program.Specific store locations associated with a merchant may be recognized asexisting within a specific location, so that in the locational, orregional operation of the marketing program the stores locations may beassociated with the corresponding community programs of the marketingprogram.

For example, an incentive may be applicable to one or more storelocations of the merchant. An international incentive may be applicableto a community program that is international, such as Right to Play™,and said international incentive may be honoured by all of themerchant's store locations in the world. A national incentive may beapplicable to a national community program, such as the Canadian OlympicTorch Relay™, and said national incentive may be honoured at all of themerchant's store locations within a particular nation (e.g., allCanadian store locations of The Bay™). A regional incentive may beapplicable to a regional community program, such as the VancouverOlympic Games™, and said regional incentive may be honoured at all ofthe merchant's store locations within a particular region (e.g., allstore locations of The Bay™ in the City of Vancouver, British Columbia,etc.). Smaller locational incentives may also be provided that areapplicable to a more localized location, such as a festival held in apark, and said localized incentives may be honoured at all of themerchant's store locations within the specified location (e.g., storelocations bordering the park where the festival is held, store locationson a street where a street festival is held, etc.).

A skilled reader will recognize that merchants of various sizes mayparticipant in the marketing program of the present invention. Themarketing program may be operable to permit a community program and/orspecific merchant store(s) to associate with the marketing program andreceive benefits. Neither the community program nor the merchant needhave a national presence. Merchants and community programs that do nothave a national presence may enjoy lower national public recognition.This lower public recognition may have resulted in reduced benefits tothe community program and/or local merchant store(s), since neither maybe recognized beyond a small location and therefore a small number ofdonators/contributors/attendees/consumers/etc. Participation in themarketing program of the present invention may provide participants withthe benefit that members gain awareness of community programs and/ormerchant store(s) occurring in their local area. This awareness mayaugment the notoriety of the community program and/or the merchantstore(s). The awareness may further have other benefits, describedherein, including increased attendance at a community program and/orincreased sales at a merchant's store.

As described in this patent application, the present invention may havea variety of embodiments, one such embodiment may involve a merchantcommitting to donate a portion of its revenue from transactions at a oneor more store locations involving members to a community program, saidcommunity program being local to the merchant store(s) where thetransactions take place. The donation portion of the revenue amount maybe based on various parameters. Said parameters may be tracked by themarketing program. The marketing program may operate so as to utilizethe tracked transaction information to calculate the amount a merchantis to pay to a community program in accordance with the promiseddonation. The donation amounts may additionally be trackable andreportable in a clear manner upon request, so that the transfer of thedonation amount is obvious and is possibly unencumbered by transferfees. In this manner this embodiment of the present invention may enablecommunity programs and merchants to participate in the marketing programin a manner that is cost effective to all parties of the marketingprogram.

In another embodiment of the present invention, the marketing programmay be operable to permit a merchant to offer different contributions todesignated community programs. This may involve a merchant providingmultiple incentives at one or more store locations to members, and atleast two of the multiple incentives being associated with differentcommunity programs. The marketing program may be operable to track themultiple incentives and/or the different contributions by merchants todesignated community programs. The factors that may be tracked by themarketing program, said factors may determine the type of contributionto be made by the merchant to a community program and/or the merchantincentive to be applied to a transaction, may include one or more of thefollowing: the time of day when a transaction occurs; the day of theweek when the transaction occurs; any member demographics; anytransaction history; any incentive details, for example, such as acoupon, provided at the time of the transaction; and the communityprogram details. A skilled reader will recognize that other factors maybe utilized by the marketing program to define and track contributionsby merchants to community programs and/or merchant incentives.

Boarding Means

In one embodiment of the present invention, to facilitate batch customeracquisition a boarding means may be provided to operate to allow a thirdparty and/or intermediary to associate itself with the marketingprogram. The intermediary may be, for example, an online retailer havinga customer base with user accounts, an online payment provider alsohaving a customer base with user accounts, an online advertiser and/orsearch provider, or any other online presence having a customer basewith user accounts. The intermediary could also be a company and themembers to be acquired by the marketing program could be the employeesof the company. The marketing program may make the boarding meansaccessible to the intermediary by, for example, a user interface forcreating the association. The intermediary may desire to associate withthe marketing program for a plurality of purposes, including: increasingits own customer base to include the marketing program's members;altruistic purposes; to increase its own charitable giving for taxpurposes; or to appeal to consumers and generate marketplace goodwill.

In one embodiment of the present invention, the boarding process mayoperate so that once the intermediary associates with the marketingprogram, the user accounts of the intermediary may automatically becomeassociated with the marketing program. Once the user accounts areassociated with the marketing program each of the users is recognized asa new member of the marketing program. The marketing program may then beoperable to provide a user interface for these new members, whereby thenew members may complete their profiles. The provision of this userinterface may occur in any of the manners described above, for example,such as through the provision of a survey, through the provision of aparticular web page, or other means. A skilled reader will recognizethat It this boarding process, and the acceptance of new membersgenerally into the marketing program, may increase the awareness of themarketing program and may significantly increase its member base. Asdescribed above, this may produce benefits for the merchants, communitygroups, and other intermediaries participating in the marketing program.

Participant Location Facilitator and Mapping Function

All members of the marketing program may be identified by the loyaltyengine of the present invention as existing in a particular location.This location may be recognized as being in the vicinity of areasassociated with particular community programs. In accordance with thescope of the community programs this area may have a perimeter thatencompasses a wide or narrow territory. For example, the member may berecognized as existing in a location that is within an area that is aneighbourhood, or an area that is a country. In embodiments of thepresent invention, it may be possible for the marketing program torecognize a member as existing in a single location (e.g., a homeaddress), or multiple locations (e.g., a home address, a work addressand/or other addresses, such as a cottage address).

In one embodiment of the present invention, a mapping means may beoperable to allow a member or other participant to request a map showingmerchants that are participants of the marketing program located in, ornear to, an area that encompasses a location of the member. Themarketing program may utilize the data mining tool to identify alocation of the member from the member profile (e.g., the home addressof a member), the marketing program may ask the member to choose alocation if multiple locations are in the member profile (e.g., choose ahome address or a work address of the member), or the marketing programmay accept a location inputted by the member as the location of themember. The area of the map may be adjustable to show various sizedareas. The marketing program may also be operable to allow a member tospecify categories or types of merchants to be shown on the map (e.g.,restaurants, clothing stores, hardware stores, etc.). A skilled readerwill recognize that other parameters may be included in the requestedquery.

The present invention may generate a map based upon the member mapquery. The data mining tool may be utilized to identify any merchantsand/or community programs located within the area of the map.

An example of a map 50 of the present invention showing merchantinformation is shown in FIG. 5. This is just one example of possiblemaps that may be generated by the present invention, and a skilledreader will recognize that other map displays or other map outputs maybe possible.

Maps generated by the present invention may show the merchant store(s)existing in, or near to, a location or area. The map may additionallyshow the location of any community programs occurring at the time whenthe query is sent (e.g., such as a street festival in the area, or aclothing drop-off located on a street). The map may have otherfacilities as well. For example, the map may indicate, may be by way ofa symbol or colour indicator, that particular merchants are offeringmerchant incentives.

The map may also permit information regarding merchants, communityprograms and/or merchant incentives to be accessed by a participant, forexample, such as by a display that appears when a mouse is held overwhere the merchant and/or community program is shown on the map, or by aclickable access to information (e.g., clicking the merchant locationaccesses the merchant web page or a summary of merchant information,etc.), or other information access and/or display means. The displayedor accessed information may include the location of a merchant storeand/or a community program, the dates when a community program isoccurring, the date(s) for a merchant incentive, and any otherinformation. The displayed or accessed information may be provided inaccordance with rules of the marketing program. A skilled reader willrecognize that the present invention may include other options ofvisually displaying or accessing information regarding merchants,community programs and merchant incentives in a specific location.

Still other embodiments of the present invention may be operable torecognize the location of a member at a point of time. For example, aGPS system on a mobile device in the possession of a member or otherparticipant may send location information to the marketing program. Inthis embodiment the marketing program may provide a member withinformation regarding merchant incentives pertaining to the location ofthe member at a point in time. (For example, a member who travels onvacation to New York City may be recognized by the marketing program asexisting in New York City because the marketing program can read thelocation of the member based on a GPS feature or application linked tothe smart phone in the possession of the member. The member may thensubmit a query to the marketing program requesting information aboutmerchant restaurants local to the location of the member in New YorkCity at the time of submitting the request. The marketing program maygenerate a map showing merchant restaurants in the vicinity of thelocation of the member submitting the request in New York City. Thefunction and capabilities of the map may be as are described above.)

Data Storage Area & Data Mining Tool

The data mining tool of the present invention may be utilized togenerate a wide variety of reports, reviews, lists, results, searchdisplays and other data from the data stored in the data storage area.In some embodiments of the present invention, in order to producecertain outputs, the data mining tool may also engage the transactionlinking utility to generate some information to be provided as part ofthe output.

The data stored in the data storage area may include informationpertaining to past, present and/or future community programs. Thisinformation may be gathered by the administrator, as described above.The community program information may link a community program to aspecific area or location, and may include details of the communityprogram (e.g., dates, times, location(s), events, summary of communityprogram, etc.).

The data may also include information regarding participants in themarketing program (e.g., merchants, members and intermediaries). Thisparticipant information may include information generated at the pointof registration, as well as information collected at later points intime, for example, such as through surveys, tracked searches, etc.

The data may further include details of transactions between members andmerchants. Such transaction details may include any merchant incentivethat was applied to the transaction. If an incentive was applied thecommunity program that the incentive was applicable to may also beincluded in the data.

In one embodiment of the present invention, a link may be producedbetween the transaction data and the community program informationalready existing in the data storage area. The data mining tool may beoperable to limit information appearing on any report, review, list,results, etc., so that such information cannot include any personalinformation pertaining to any participant of the marketing program.Alternatively, the data mining tool may generate reports, reviews,lists, results, search displays, etc., in accordance with rules wherebythe data mining tool anonymizes any personal information utilized togenerate the reports, reviews, lists, results, etc. A skilled readerwill recognize that other methods and means may be utilized to ensurethat personal information is not disseminated in any report, review,list, results, etc. Additionally, a skilled reader will recognize thatthe rules for limiting the dissemination of personal information may bein accordance with privacy legislation pertaining to a particularjurisdiction, may provide limitations representing several levels ofsecurity, or may be set to a standard that is stricter than privacylegislation. The standard of privacy imposed on the information may bechosen and applied at the discretion of the administrator.

A skilled reader will recognize that other information regarding thetransactions, participants, merchant incentives, donations, andcommunity programs relating to the merchant program may be collected bythe loyalty engine and stored in the data storage area.

In one embodiment of the present invention, a data access managementutility may be utilized to organize the collection of data, the storageof data in the data storage area and the access of data in the datastorage area. The data access management utility may be operable torestrict direct access to the data to the administrator, for the purposeof protecting data integrity and privacy of personal information. Thedata access management utility may further restrict access to particularby the data mining tool for particular types of information generationand/or for specific participants. In particular, the data accessmanagement utility may recognize that intermediaries have limitedparticipation in the marketing program and therefore that any query orrequest for information instigated by an intermediary may not access,even for reporting purposes, particular data stored in the data storagearea.

In one embodiment of the present invention all of the informationexisting in the data storage area may be accessible by the data miningtool for the purpose of generating reports, reviews, lists, results,summaries, overviews, and any other information. The reports, reviews,lists, results, search displays, summaries, overviews, and otherinformation may be generated in accordance with rules of the loyaltysystem. For example, rules may be created whereby a merchant transactionreport is generated at a regular interval (e.g., monthly, etc.) for eachmerchant showing the transactions between merchants and members during aspecified period of time.

Rules may also be created to be used for the generation of reports,reviews, lists, results, summaries, overviews, and other informationupon request. For example, rules may be created whereby a merchant mayrequest a list of members existing in the vicinity of a merchant's storelocation.

In some embodiments of the present invention, free-form queries may alsobe undertaken by the data mining tool, whereby specific information maybe gathered for a particular purpose or application. For example, aftera merchant incentive is completed a free-form query may be created togenerate information pertaining to the merchant incentive. Thisinformation may be reviewed to glean important understanding of thesuccess of the merchant incentive. A report, review, result, etc. may befurther utilized to develop new merchant incentives.

In other embodiments of the present invention, a search requested by aspecific participant may be moulded by information specific to thatparticipant. For example, if a search is requested and/or otherwisegenerated by a member, the data mining tool may mine the member'sinformation, including the member's profile data, and determine thelocation of the member, or other preferences of the member, and may usethis information as search parameters. The resulting report, review,list, summary, overview, and any other form of information collectedduring the search, may be limited to data for the location of the memberand/or other preferences of the member.

In still another embodiment of the present invention, a web page orother display may be provided to a market program participant, whereby arequest for information or other data query may be generated andconveyed to the data mining tool. The request for information or otherdata query may be generated through a request or search interface. Forexample, the request or search interface may be a web page or otherdisplay and it may provide entry spaces where specific information maybe entered by a participant, such as a data range, a location, etc. Sucha web page or other display requiring specific data entry may support arequest for information or other data query that is governed by one ormore rules of the marketing program. A web page or other display mayfurther allow a participant to choose, or otherwise specify, specifictypes of information to be accessed by the data mining tool. Suchchoices or specifications may not be limited by any rules of themarketing program. A skilled reader will recognize that a variety ofmeans may be utilized to provide a market program participant a means ofrequesting information or generating any other data query.

The data mining tool may be applied to utilize the request forinformation or other data query information provided by the participant,the marketing program rules, or other inputs to search the data storagearea for data relevant to the request for information or other dataquery submitted by the participant to the marketing program. The datamining tool will be utilized to conduct the request for information orother data query search. Consequently, all of the information stored inthe data storage area may be accessed by the data mining tool for thepurpose of the request for information or other data query search. Thisinformation may include member profiles, transaction data, surveyinformation, merchant incentive information, merchant information,intermediary information, etc.

For example, as shown in FIG. 6, a request for information may begenerated by a participant 60, who utilizes a request or searchinterface 62. When the participant submits the request for informationto the marketing system the data mining tool may engage in a searchprocess 64. As an example, if the request for information is a searchfor merchants in a particular vicinity, the data mining tool may accessdata in the data storage area, including merchant profile information,survey feedback regarding merchants 65 and merchant incentiveinformation 66. The data mining tool will generate results 67 that maybe displayed to the participant or otherwise communicated to theparticipant. In one embodiment of the present invention a cost may belevied for access to the results, and or further searches based upon theresults.

The results may display more than one merchant. The participant may beprovided with the opportunity to select one or more of the merchants 68to narrow the scope of the results. For example, the participant mayhave the opportunity to click upon a merchant included in the resultsprovided as part of an online display. The activity of clicking upon amerchant may cause the participant to access the merchant's web page, orto cause the data mining tool to generate and display more detailsregarding the merchant. For example, a web page 69 showing reviewsrelating to the selected merchant and merchant incentives may bedisplayed when a participant clicks upon a merchant. It may be possiblefor a participant to conduct a transaction 70 with the merchant, such asa transaction whereby a participant purchases an item from a merchant,and said transaction may involve a merchant incentive. A skilled readerwill recognize that this is just one example of how the request forinformation or data query may function and that other functions arepossible.

Analytic Mode

In one embodiment the data mining tool may include an analytic mode. Theanalytic mode may be operable to cause the data mining tool to performan analysis based upon the data that the data mining tool accesses. Theanalytic mode may incorporate rules of the marketing system, or may bedistinct from rules of the marketing system.

The analytics may cause the data mining tool to produce information thatprovides more than a display of a subset of the data stored in the datastorage area. The analytic mode may access and incorporate any of theinformation collected and gathered by the marketing program and storedin the data storage area. The analytic mode may therefore utilized toreflect information: in response to a particular advertisement, merchantincentive or other aspect of the marketing program; providingbehavioural data relating to member transactions; and/or pointing tomember interests which may be the basis for directing particularadvertisements or merchant incentives to individual members or membergroups. The analytic mode may be utilized to provide information to beused to develop new merchant incentives, marketing and philanthropicstrategies for the marketing program participants and/or the widercommunity. Analytic mode results may reflect results for a particulararea, which may be a city block, a neighbourhood, a city, a street, aregion, a county, a province or state, a nation, etc., to reflectresults for widening ranges of participants and locations.

For example, the data mining tool may produce a list of members existingin a particular location based upon a query, said query being a either afree-form query or a rule(s)-based query, if the analytic mode is notengaged for the data mining tool. If the analytic mode is engaged thedata mining tool may analyze or otherwise filter, re-represent,consolidate or manipulate prior to presenting the generated data in areport, review, list, overview, summary, result, etc. A skilled readerwill recognize that the analytic mode can undertake a variety of dataanalysis techniques, including algorithms, calculations, reviews,filters, consolidation, manipulation, re-representations. The analyticmode may further involve one or more rules of the marketing program.Additionally the analytic mode may be utilized to produce reports,reviews, lists, overviews, summaries, results, etc. on a regular basis,or upon demand, as described for the data mining tool generally above.

The benefit of the analytic mode may be to generate particular data,provided in a specific format, that may be utilized for a precisepurpose. For example, the analytic mode may generate information thatprovides customer demographics for a particular merchant incentive. Thecustomer demographics may be utilized to develop new types of targetedmerchant incentives. A skilled reader will recognize that variety oftypes of information may be generated by an analytic mode and that avariety of uses may be made of such generated information in the contextof the marketing program.

The data mining tool, with or without the analytic mode engaged, may beutilized to provide information to participants of the present inventionthat may aid in creating links between merchants, customer programsand/or specific customer demographics. For example, the data mining toolmay be utilized to generate a list of members who may make use of aparticular merchant incentive offered in one or more specific merchantstore locations. Such a list may be utilized to provide instructions tothe loyalty engine to disseminate a communication (e.g., via email, to asmart phone, etc.) to the members included in the list regarding amerchant incentive. As another example, the data mining tool may beutilized to generate a list of members and/or merchants existing in aparticular location who may be interested in attending a specificcommunity program event. Such a list may be utilized by a communityevent to produce a guest list to whom invites may be disseminated (e.g.,via email, to a smart phone, via the regular post, etc.) to the memberinvitees. As yet another example, the data mining tool may generate adisplay of a set of reviews of a particular merchant to a third partyconsidering becoming a member of the marketing program. Such a list maybe utilized by the third party to decide whether to become a member ofthe marketing program or not, or whether to visit a particular merchantor not.

A skilled reader will recognize that a variety of information may begenerated by the data mining tool, with or without the analytic modeengaged, and that the breadth of the information generated may bedirectly affected by the depth of information stored in the data storagearea. Storing a wide variety of information in the storage data area,which may be portioned for storage purposes, but wholly accessible bythe data mining tool, provides data having significant depth for thedata mining tool to utilize. The present invention is therefore operableto provide not only a wide variety of information, but also detailedinformation and specific targeted information to be utilized for manypurposes.

Transaction Linking Utility

A transaction linking utility may be operable to determine links betweenmember or user behaviour or attributes and a transaction. Thedetermination of links may be qualified, to indicate a level oflikelihood or certainty of a match between the member or user behaviouror attributes and a transaction. For example, the transaction linkingutility may be operable to determine that a search for a productundertaken by a member may have resulted in a particular transactionoccurring. In this manner the transaction linking utility identifies alink or a match between the search and the transaction by the member.The match may not be wholly certain in each case and therefore thetransaction linking utility may further be operable to indicate a levelof certainty or likelihood that the match or link between the search andthe transaction is accurate. Many factors can be utilized to determinethe level of certainty or likelihood. A skilled reader will recognizethat a variety of member or user behaviours or attributes may further befactors in the determination of the transaction linking utility.

The transaction linking utility may be operable in some embodiments ofthe present invention to generate behavioural data regarding activitiesor behaviours of members or users in relation to transactions. Thetransaction linking utility may be utilized in conjunction with the datamining tool and in some cases the analytic mode to generate specificdata for a variety of purposes relating to transactions.

Method

A skilled reader will recognize that a variety of methods may be appliedin the present invention. The description below provides some possibleexamples of methods of the present invention.

Registration of Participants and Data/Information Collection

The method of the present invention may involve an administratorcollecting information regarding community programs. The administratormay utilize automated search means and/or manual search means to locatecommunity programs. Information regarding the community programs, forexample, such as the dates, times, events, purpose of the communityprogram, may be stored in the data storage area. The informationcollected regarding each community program may include details necessaryfor an individual to attend a community program, as well as detailsregarding the purpose, history or aims of the community program. Allcommunity program information may be stored in the data storage area.The information collected and stored for each community program mayinclude details regarding the location where the community programoperates or events relating to the community program are held.

The community program information may be displayed in a variety ofmeans, such as in a list of community programs, a calendar showing thedates of community program events, or in any other means.

Members and merchants may register with the marketing program of thepresent invention. The process of registration may involve the membersand/or merchants providing certain information to the marketing program.This information may be saved in a profile for each member and/ormerchant. The profile information may include a variety of types ofdetails, but may also include a participant identifier. The participantidentifier may be retrieved from organizations or programs the merchantand/or member is previously involved in, for example, such as a BINnumber, a financial card number, or a transaction number. Alternativelythe participant identifier may be randomly generated and applied to theprofile by the marketing program. Additional information may becollected regarding participants due to activities (e.g., transactions,searches, queries, reviews, etc.) and/or the provision of additionalinformation by participants (e.g., by direct input, survey responses,etc.).

Some members may be boarded into the system, so that such members arenot required to individually enter initial profile information. Profilesinformation may be transferred to the marketing program for members thathave previously been involved with other organizations or programs formsaid organizations or programs. If boarding occurs the individual memberwill be required to activate the profile in order to register with themarketing program.

A boarding process, such as is shown in FIG. 7, may be utilized forexample for employees of a company or a financial card provider. In thisexample, the company or financial card provider may decide to join themarketing program, for example, the company or financial card providermay join as an intermediary and thereby have partial participation inthe marketing program. The company or financial card provider may makeavailable information regarding all of its employees or financial cardholders for boarding purposes. The employees or financial card holdersmay be provided with a registration activation code. Once the employeeor financial card holder provides the registration activation code tothe marketing program the member registration is complete for theemployee or financial card holder who then becomes a member 71 of themarketing program. In this example, the participant identifier for themembers could be an employee number or a financial card number. Thisinformation would be transferred in the boarding process. Alternatively,an employee or financial card holder may be required to watch aninformational video regarding the marketing program, or view otherinformation prior to becoming registered as a member. A skilled readerwill recognize the variety of means of registration that may be utilizedto register a boarded member with the marketing program.

After registration members may access merchant information 72 regardingone or more merchants through the marketing program, as described inthis specification. The member may request and access specificinformation regarding a merchant, for example, such as informationregarding merchant products, services and/or incentives. The member mayalso review information pertaining to the member, such as any amount ofrewards (such as reward points) accumulated by the member, memberprofile information, etc. The member may engage in transactions with themerchant 73, as a result of accessing information regarding a merchantor for other reasons, and the transactions may occur online or offline.Information regarding the transaction may be transferred to themarketing program 74, and the transaction linking utility may beutilized to confirm that a member is eligible for a merchant incentive.The matching may utilize details of the transaction or other memberdetails stored in the data storage area in conjunction with thetransaction details, for example, such as merchant incentiveinformation, the identification of a member, financial card information,or other information, to identify when a member is eligible for amerchant incentive.

The transfer of information from a merchant to the marketing program foran online transaction may occur in a variety of ways. For example, theinformation may be transferred via an information link existing betweenthe marketing program and the online site where the transactionoccurred. If the online site where the transaction occurred is accessedthrough the marketing program website, or through a search engine linkedto the marketing program, an information link may automatically transferthe information regarding the transaction to the marketing program. Inother instances, the marketing system may be capable of searching themerchant online transaction information stored in the merchant's serverto identify transactions involving members of the marketing program orany merchant incentive. In one embodiment, upon a merchant transaction anotification may be sent to the marketing system to search themerchant's transaction information, or the search may occur at anyinterval or time after the transaction. It may also be possible for themerchant site to transfer information to marketing system at regularintervals when there is relevant transaction information reflectingtransactions involving either members or merchant incentives. Anytransfer of transaction information or search of transaction informationmay occur either in real-time in relation to the transaction, or at anytime after the transaction occurs. A skilled reader will recognize thata variety of other means and/or methods of transferring transactiondetails to the marketing program during or after an online transactionoccurs may be applied in the present invention.

The transfer of information from a merchant to the marketing program foran offline transaction may occur in a variety of ways. The point of saledevice of the merchant may be operable to transfer transaction detailsto the marketing program, either during a sale, for example in realtime, or after one or more sales as an upload. Alternatively, themerchant may have a system whereby an electronic report of thetransactions is generated and transferred to the marketing programeither automatically or upon a specific activity of the merchant. As yetanother option, the marketing system may provide a screen whereby amerchant may fill-in transaction details and thereby provide thetransaction details to the marketing system. A skilled reader willrecognize that a variety of other means and/or methods of transferringtransaction details to the marketing program during or after an offlinetransaction occurs may be applied in the present invention.

The present invention may involve other means of transferring onlineand/or offline transaction information to the marketing program. Forexample, a transfer means may be integrated with a point of sale deviceused in the transaction, whereby the information is captured by thepoint of sale device and transferred to the marketing program by thepoint of sale device. As another example, data feeds may be generated byone or more merchant acquirer or payment processor (for example, such asMoneris™) and the merchant acquirer or payment processor may transferthe data feeds to the marketing program. As yet another example, datafeeds may be generated by one or more card issuers (for example, such asthe Royal Bank of Canada™, Toronto Dominion Bank™, etc.) and the cardissuer may transfer the data feeds to the marketing program. As stillanother example, data feeds may be generated by one or more cardassociations (for example, such as Visa™, MasterCard™, etc.) and thecard association may transfer the data feeds to the marketing program.As yet another example, data feeds may be generated by one or more dataaggregators and the data aggregator may transfer the data feeds to themarketing program. A skilled reader will recognize that other optionsmay be available for transfer of information to the marketing program,including any combination of any of the examples provided above.

As the capture and storage of transaction details, for both online andoffline transactions, may be critical to the effectiveness of thepresent invention, the marketing program may incorporate a means ofobligating and/or otherwise requiring merchants to provide transactiondetails to the marketing program. For example, the provision of full andcomplete transaction details to the marketing program may be written asan obligation in any contract whereby the merchant becomes a participantof the marketing program. The administrator may check whether a merchantis meeting this obligation, for example by checking incentives againstthe transactions, or by any other checking means. A skilled reader willrecognize that other means of requiring merchants to provide transactiondetails may also be applied.

Moreover, a merchant may consider itself to be obligated to providetransaction details due to a recognition that the marketing program issignificantly more effective when robust transaction details areprovided by all participating merchants, as the transaction details canbe utilized to assist merchants to derive information regarding consumerbehaviours, and other information. As is described herein, theinformation of the marketing program may be utilized for a number ofpurposes, including attracting a larger clientele, creating newincentive programs and other uses. These uses can create significantbenefits for merchants, and for this reason, or to meet otherobligations or requirements, the merchants may be inclined to assist byproviding transaction details to the marketing program.

In one embodiment, a member may decide after accessing informationregarding a merchant, a product, or receiving one or more incentives toundertake a transaction. As described in this application, theinformation may be accessed by way of a search (e.g., online or offline,and through a search engine or other data source linked to the marketingsystem or a search engine or other data source not linked to themarketing system). A search for information may be recognized by themarketing system, and a transaction occurring after the search may beassumed to have occurred as a result of the search, in accordance withcriteria of the marketing system, such as the time-lapse between thesearch and the transaction. If the search causes an incentive to becommunicated to the member that is redeemable based upon a transaction,the transaction may also be assumed by the marketing system to be basedupon the incentive.

In another embodiment of the present invention, a member may notundertake a search, but may be assumed by the marketing system to haveengaged in a transaction due to an incentive if: the incentive isadvertised in the merchant location (e.g., a balloon is provided as anincentive with every purchase); the member acknowledges in apost-transaction survey that the transaction occurred due to theincentive; the member receives a communication about an incentivethrough electronic communication directed to a personal information areabelonging to a member (e.g., a text, an email); the member accesses awebpage displaying the incentive; the member attends an event (e.g., acommunity program event, or other event) where the incentive iscommunicated and the attendance of the member at the event is made knownto the marketing system and this information stored in the data storagearea; and/or other communication means that is trackable by themarketing system so that the marketing system can evaluate the timebetween the communication of the incentive to the member and thetransaction.

After the transaction is completed the transaction data may beprocessed. This may involve accruing a donation to a community program,if a donation was incorporated into a merchant incentive generated bythe transaction.

In one embodiment of the present invention, a post-transaction survey 75may be generated and disseminated to the member. The member may respond,and in particular may confirm whether the transaction occurred as aresult of the member reviewing the merchant information through themarketing program.

At any point it may be possible for participants to request informationfrom the marketing program 76, as a report, result, review, searchdisplay, etc. This request for information or other data query mayengage the analytic mode in some circumstances. A skilled reader willrecognize that the results of the request for information or other dataquery may be utilized for a variety of purposes, including for example,identifying transactions occurring in a manner that indicates thetransaction occurred as a result of the member receiving informationregarding the merchant through the marketing program.

Intermediaries may register with the marketing program of the presentinvention and thereby gain limited access to the program functions andthe marketing program data. For example, an intermediary may be acommunity group interested in limited access for the purpose of lookingat the merchant incentives offered pertaining to the community groupevent. Or the community group may be interested in limited access for hepurpose of generating lists of merchants and/or members that may beinvited to attend a community program event (such as a fund raisingdinner). The list may include local merchants and/or members, ormerchants and/or members who have characteristics in their profile thatsuggest they may be interested in supporting the community program. Asanother example, an intermediary may be a marketing associate who isworking with one or merchants to create merchant incentives relating tocommunity programs. The marketing associate may be granted limitedaccess to some of the data and a certain activities of the data miningtool, to generate information to aid the marketing associate in creatinga feasible merchant incentive relating to a community program. As yetanother example, an intermediary may be an organization, such as acompany or a financial card provider. The organization's participationin the marketing program as an intermediary may provide a link wherebythe organizations its associates direct involvement in the marketingprogram as merchants and/or members.

After the point of registration additional information pertaining toparticipants in the marketing program may be gathered through a varietyof means. For example, a survey may be provided to a participant andcompleting the survey may generate data that is transferred and storedin the data storage area. Other means of entering information into themarketing program may also be provided to a participant, such as a webpage. Surveys and other data input means may be provided to aparticipant through a variety of means, for example, such as a mobiledevice, a web page, or other means.

Possible Data Mining

After registration a merchant may consider possible incentives toimplement at a merchant location and/or online. This decision mayinvolve considerations of relevant community programs, possibleincentives, cross-loyalty and/or cross-selling groups.

The marketing program may provide query and/or searching assistancewhereby a merchant may use a template search query, and the search querymay include drop down menus showing search options, to deriveinformation from the marketing system. The template may be utilized bythe data mining tool and/or analytic mode to generate a particularresult, such as a report, list, incentive suggestion, community programlink suggestion, cross-selling suggestion, cross-loyalty suggestion, orother results. A skilled reader will recognize the variety of resultsthat may be derived from the data and/or information in the data storagearea, as well as the variety of search query templates that may beprovided to a merchant by the marketing system. The results may beutilized by the merchant to make decisions, such as, for examplechoosing incentives to implement, choosing to form cross-selling groups,choosing to form cross-loyalty groups, choosing community programs tolink with, etc.

Information and other data collected by the present invention may bestored in a manner whereby the information is easily mineable by avariety of participants and/or third parties, including localbusinesses. The data mining tool, and optionally the analytic mode, maybe utilized to generate or otherwise derive results that may be utilizedby merchants or other business owners to determine indicators ofsuccessful incentives and other business generators in a specificgeographic area. For example, the results of the present invention mayindicate why one merchant location may get more business than anothermerchant location or other business location, such as the type ofincentive offered (e.g., balloons are offered as an incentive at onemerchant location and since these appeal to kids the mothers shoppingwith their kids will frequent that merchant location which issignificant because mothers represent the majority of shoppers in thatgeographical area; or people living in a particular area may be likelyto leave on extended vacations to their cottages during the summermonths and on weekends during the rest of the year and therefore may beunlikely to visit some types of merchants during these times; etc.). Askilled reader will recognize the many uses that may be made of theinformation and data collected by the present invention and the factthat such information is generally available for data mining andanalytic uses.

In one embodiment of the present invention, the data mining tool mayaccess information and/or data in the data storage area, and may alsoaccess information and/or data from other data sources, which may beoutside the marketing system, such as data sources (e.g., databases,hard disks, etc.) controlled by intermediaries, other participants, orthird parties. Access to these other data sources may be recognized bythe template, by the analytic mode, or by other rules utilized by themarketing system.

A merchant may utilize the data mining tool to identify communityprograms occurring or to occur in the future, in the vicinity of one ormore merchant store locations. The merchant may then devise and developa merchant incentive for the one or more stores that are local to thecommunity program, said merchant incentive being created to specificallyrelate to the community program. For example, the relation between thecommunity program and the merchant incentive may function so that upon atransaction between a merchant and a member, a donation may be made tothe community program. The transaction between a merchant and a membermay be the point at which a merchant incentive is honoured, which mayinvolve providing a tangible benefit to a member (such as a prize,sweepstakes entry, or a discount), transferring a benefit to a communityprogram (such as a donation), or another activity. The transactioninformation may be transferred by the merchant, for example, such as bythe merchant's point of sale interface, to the marketing program, and atransaction linking utility may be utilized to confirm that the merchantand member are participants of the marketing program, and that themember qualifies for one or more merchant incentives. A skilled readerwill recognize that the merchant incentive may of various types, acoupon, a discount, entry in a sweepstakes, a prize, a donation to acommunity program, and that a variety of other merchant incentives arepossible.

The merchant incentive may be tailored to reflect the specificrelationship between a community program and a merchant, aspects ofeither the merchant or the community program, demographics of localmembers, etc. Information generated by the data mining tool may assistwith the tailoring of a merchant incentive.

A variety of links may exist between participants of the marketingprogram and these links may be recognized in the data storage area. Thelinks may also develop relationships between participants. Additionallythe links and/or relationships may guide and direct the experience ofparticipants of the marketing program. Links may further be createdwhereby a merchant may be linked to the marketing program brand. Anotherpossibility is that links are created between the merchant program andsocial media (e.g., Facebook, Twitter, etc.), whereby social media maybe utilized to promote merchants, merchant incentives, communityprograms and/or the marketing program.

In one embodiment of the present invention, to allow participants toaccess information regarding the marketing program, the marketingprogram functions, and to generate queries and/or requests forinformation, the marketing program may be presented as a website, havinga main page and several pages attached thereto. The pages may reflectparticular functions of the program, such as reward look-ups, maps ofmerchants and/or community programs, calendar pages showing communityevents and/or merchant incentives, links to merchants and/or communityprograms, access to merchant incentives available to a member, etc. Theweb pages may facilitate presentations viewable by participants and/ornon-participants of the marketing program.

In one embodiment of the present invention, certain triggers may be setto initiate particular activities of the marketing program. For example,triggered activities may include: data mining in accordance with setrules; sweepstakes processing; donation distribution to communityprograms or other intermediaries (e.g., such as charities); post-salefeedback; and enhanced analytic mode of the data mining tool.Additionally, particular reports may be produced at regular, specifiedintervals. Any activity of the marketing program may be initiated uponrequest, whether a trigger or a specified interval is set for thatactivity or not.

As shown in FIG. 9, in one embodiment of the present invention, avariety of inputs and outputs may be provided to and generated by thedata mining tool. The inputs and outputs may also be affected by whetherthe data mining tool engages the analytic mode. For example, the datamining tool, and possibly the analytic mode, may access data or otherinformation that is either stored in the data storage area of themarketing system 100, or may access information from other data sources102, such as remote databases of intermediaries, merchants or otherthird parties that the marketing system is permitted to access. The datamining tool, and possibly the analytic mode as well, both of which areelements of the marketing system, may be operable to provide an output104 that provides suggestions of incentives to a merchant, or group ofmerchants. The data mining tool, and possibly the analytic mode as well,may also provide other types of reports 106 or other documents as anoutput. The data mining tool, and possibly the analytic mode as well,may further be operable to generate one or more survey questions 108 asan output to be directed to members. Such survey questions may bedynamic questions. For example, a dynamic question could include thefollowing or any other question: a question asking a member if an onlinequery or search undertaken by the member prior to a transactioninfluenced the transaction if the marketing system identifies asuspected correlation between a query or search and a transaction; or aquestions that are different depending on whether the transactionoccurred on a weekend or a weekday.

A skilled reader will recognize that other results 110 may be generatedby the data mining tool, and that these other results may be any of awide-variety of results.

The data mining tool may access and utilize a variety of information inthe course of it processing, such as any of the following, or anycombinations of the following: transaction details; member demographics;searches data from searches providers or search engines that are linkedto the marketing system; search data from search providers or searchengines that are not linked to the marketing system, but that providedata to the marketing system; post-transaction survey responses;responses from any other survey provided by the marketing system, forexample, such as market research surveys, etc.; merchant details,including any merchant preferences, merchant store geographicallocations, merchant capacity, merchant inventory, merchant targetmarkets, or any other merchant information; seasonal behaviours of anyparticipants of the marketing program, or any other users that data iscollected for and transferred to the marketing system; weather trends offorecast information provided to, or accessed by, the marketing system;and any other information or data. A skilled reader will recognize thata variety of other data or information may also be available from themarketing system data storage area and may be utilized by the datamining tool, and in some instances by the analytic mode as well.

The information and data may be processed by the marketing system, andin particular by the transaction linking utility, the data mining tool,and in some instances by the analytic mode as well, to provide specificoutputs. For example, the outputs may be any of the following: feedbackregarding any success and/or failures of incentives associated with amerchant; feedback regarding any success and/or failures of incentivesassociated with similar merchants in non-competing geographical areas,if sufficient information regarding similar merchants is provided to, oraccessed by, the marketing system; comparisons of incentives associatedwith a merchant and incentives associated with similar merchants innon-competing geographical areas, if sufficient information regardingsimilar merchants is provided to, or accessed by, the marketing system;feedback regarding success rates and trends from associated platforms,such as search providers, web advertising, traditional media (e.g.,print, radio, television, etc.), if sufficient information regardingsuch associated platforms are provided to, or accessed by, the marketingsystem; and feedback regarding consumer behaviour or members or users. Askilled reader will recognize that a data or information may also beprovided to, or accessed by, the marketing system and utilized by thetransaction linking utility, the data mining tool, and in some cases theanalytic mode as well, to provide a variety of other outputs as well.

Analysis of data to product behavioural data relating to members orusers may be a particular output of embodiments of the presentinvention. The behavioural data may indicate consumer behaviour ofmembers or merchants specifically. Such behavioural data may be derivedthrough a variety of analysis means undertaken by the transactionlinking utility, the data mining too and in some cases the analyticmode. The analysis behavioural data output may be utilized inconjunction with specific rules to formulate determinations for avariety of purposes by the marketing program and the participants. Forexample, the behavioural data may be applied to rules or formula, suchas rules based on a determinant outcome, for example, rules having thefollowing structure: if x then y. For example, if a consumer exhibits xbehaviour then y is the outcome. As a further example, one rule may bethat if a member or user undertakes a search on a mobile communicationdevice then that member or user is exhibiting interest in a transactionin the near future. Therefore the time lapse between the search and thetransaction may be expected to be a shorter time period than is expectedbetween other searches and transactions to indicate a likelyrelationship between the transaction and the search. The basis for thisrule may be that a search on a mobile device may be more likely to occurwhile a member or user is already shopping.

This is an example of one rule that may be used to evaluate or analyzebehavioural data. Rules may be further narrowed to factor in certaindemographics or attributes of members, such as age groups, genders,parenting responsibilities, etc. which may affect transactionsundertaken by members. A skilled reader will recognize that a variety ofother rules and factors within rules may be utilized for otherevaluations and analysis of behavioural data. A skilled reader will alsorecognize that extraction of behavioural data, and the analysis andevaluation of such data may expand the member demographic and attributedata of the present invention. This expanded data may be used for manypurposes, including generating specific incentives to increase purchasesmade at merchant stores (either online or bricks and mortar stores) andthe good will ascribed to merchants.

A skilled reader will recognize that a variety of reports or otherdocuments may be generated by the data mining tool and in some instancesthe analytic mode as well. For example, such as incentives statistics orincentive trends, to provide details of incentives communicated,incentives redeemed, incentive effectiveness on a cost/return basis, andincentive effectiveness on a traction basis. As another example, successof associated platforms that may include search providers, webadvertising, traditional media (e.g., print, radio or television) may beprovided if information or data regarding associated platforms isprovided to, or accessed by, the marketing system. Still another exampleis output that provides analysis and behavioural data relating toconsumer activities of members or users. As yet another example, surveystatistics, trends and conclusions may be generated, so that themarketing system may provide comprehensive reporting of survey dataacquired and any correlations that can be made from external factorsprovided to, or accessed by, the marketing program. Such a correlationmay be for example, that a golf course has fewer transactions on colddays. The marketing system may be operable to generate suggestions ofactivities that may address the correlations, generally in the form ofincentive suggestions. For example, the marketing system may suggestthat an incentive be offered on golfing costs when the weather is belowa seasonal averages. A skilled reader will recognize that a variety ofreports containing a variety of information, correlations andsuggestions may be generated by the present invention.

As shown in FIG. 10, in one embodiment of the present invention,incentives may generated based on member activities and the data orother information provided to, or accessed by, the marketing systemregarding these activities. A member 120 may generate a query or search128 by utilizing a search engine that is either part of the marketingsystem or linked to the marketing system. The search engine 130, andpossibly other media, may be utilized to generate search results and asearch click history. The search history 132 may be provided to, oraccessed by, the marketing system 136. The marketing system may use thesearch history, in conjunction with other information to generate one ormore reports 142 which may be provided to one or more merchants 140. Thesearch history may also be utilized with other information to generateincentive suggestions 122, which may lead to the generation of amerchant incentive 124, such as a discount, that may be approved 126 bya merchant. An approved incentive may be provided to a member as part ofthe search engine search results, or search click options.

A member 120 may further engage in one or more transactions 134 with amerchant. Details of each transaction may be provided to a transactionprocessing system 144, such as a point of sale device, or any othermeans. The transaction details may be provided by the transactionprocessing system to the merchant 140. The transaction processing systemmay generate transaction data record 146, which may be provided to themarketing system and utilized by the transaction linking facility inparticular.

A member 120, may also complete a post-transaction survey 148. Thesurvey itself, or the survey data may be provided to the marketingsystem. All of the data provided to the marketing system, including thesurvey details, the transaction details and the search history details,may be utilized by the marketing system to generate reports, or otherinformation, or certain activities, such as sales reports, suggestionsfor incentives, or incentive generation activities, as just a fewexamples of possible outputs of the marketing system.

Some embodiments of the present invention may be operable to generateincentives on an automatic basis. The marketing system may utilizeinformation and data stored in the data storage area to performparticular analysis, including analysis of the effectiveness of priorincentives, as well as market trends, such as periods when sales arehigher or lower. The marketing system may utilize the analysis resultsand other data to generate one or more new incentives. These incentivesmay be automatically generated and may be communicated by the marketingsystem pending merchant approval. Merchant approval may be manual orautomatic approval. Upon approval the incentive may be auto-loaded tovarious media including any of the following: search engines,newspapers, brochures, flyers, specialty advertising (e.g., Val Pak™,etc.) or any other media.

A variety of information or data may be utilized by the marketing systemto automatically generate one or more incentives. For example, any ofthe following data or information may be utilized: merchant type (e.g.merchant category, services and/or products provided, service vs.product based merchant, etc.); location of merchant stores andgeographical location; history of a merchant's experience with past andpresent incentives (customer acceptance, feedback about the incentives,contribution margin, etc.), for example incentives that generate themost interest, as indicated by the incentives being rated highest byusers and members in post-transaction surveys, or as indicated by acomparison of incremental sales data following the incentive beingposted; successful incentives in areas that are non-competinggeographical areas; indications of identified member's interest in anincentive, such as data based on recorded search patterns in an onlinesearch environment (e.g., frequent searching of a product, service, ormember by a user), electronic coupons downloaded by a user or member, orthe comparison of search patterns and/or downloaded coupons withtransaction details; and member demographics tied to transaction historyand trends.

Automated incentive generation may be based on a variety of criteria,for example it may be based on specific customer segments. Such customersegments may include as an example: targeted local neighbourhoods;customer demographics (e.g., gender, age, etc.); financial card BINrange, as this may determine if the card is a regular card, gold card,platinum card, etc., and the type of card may provide details regardingthe card holder and the likely transactions to be conducted by the cardholder; buying history of users, members, or other customers; usersvisiting a search provider's online site; the search behaviour ofparticular users, such as frequent searches relating to a product orservice, such as bikes or bike accessories, undertaken by a user or amember.

The incentives that are automatically generated may be related toseveral elements and/or factors. As an example, automatically generatedincentives may be related to any of the following: a season; one or moredays of the week, or of the month; special events, including holidayseasons (e.g., the Christmas season, etc.) and celebrations (e.g.,parades, a community event such a run for a cause, etc.); or localevents (e.g., little league finals, town street festivals, etc.). Thesuccess or effectiveness of an incentive may be determined based on anyof the following: the statistics regarding whether an incentive isredeemed; post transaction feedback regarding the incentive, such asfeedback derived from a post-transaction survey; and increased salesfrom a group of consumers targeted by an incentive, or during a periodof time that is targeted by an incentive.

Transactions

Transactions between merchants and members may occur online or offline.A transaction will be recognized as occurring between a merchant and amember because the member will utilize at least one of theidentifications recognized as belonging to the member by the marketingprogram. The merchant may also utilize at least one of the participantidentifiers recognized as belonging to the merchant by the marketingprogram.

As an example of an online transaction, such a transaction may occur ina website environment, whereby a member purchases an item or servicefrom a merchant through a series of clicks, or other online means ofpurchasing an item or service. The website will transfer the transactioninformation to the marketing program. In some instances the informationmay be transferred to the marketing program by a third party. Themarketing program will recognize the transaction as occurring between amember and a merchant due to the use of the participant identifiers.

As an example of an offline transaction, a member may visit a merchant'sstore location and may undertake a transaction to purchase an item orservice from the merchant. The transaction may involve a point of saledevice that will transfer information regarding the transaction,including the participant identifiers to the marketing program. Atransaction that does not involve a point of sale device may be recordedby another means and the transaction details, including the participantidentifiers, may be transferred or manually entered into the marketingprogram. The transaction details may be transferred to the marketingsystem by a third party in some instances.

Depending upon the form of transaction, the transaction may berecognized by the marketing program in real-time, near-real time orafter a time lapse. Transaction details may be matched to a memberprofile by the data mining tool or other element of the loyalty engine,and the transaction details may be stored to the member profile in thedata storage area. Following a transaction a post-transaction survey maybe communicated to a member, for example, via a web page, via email, viaa mobile device, etc. The post-transaction survey may gather feedbackfrom the member. In some embodiments of the present invention thepost-transaction survey may be anonymous and the information collectedfrom the survey may be stored in a manner linked to the merchant in thedata storage area. This data may be utilized by the data mining tool andthe analytics mode. Post-transaction survey results may be generated bythe data mining tool and may be provided to participants of themarketing program.

A merchant may utilize information generated by the data mining tool andpossibly the transaction linking utility, both of which utilize the datastored in the data storage area, to devise, define and develop amerchant incentive. In one embodiment of the present invention, anintermediary, such as a marketing associate, may be involved indeveloping or communicating a merchant incentive. Either or both of themerchant and the intermediary may access information generated by thedata mining tool for the purpose of creating the marketing incentive, oranalyzing the effectiveness of a marketing incentive once it iscompleted. A group of merchant incentives may further be analyzed forthe purpose of creating more effective merchant incentives in thefuture.

Information may be collected pertaining to participants in the marketingprogram upon the event of transactions between a merchant and a member.Such information may be transaction details, and may further includedetails regarding any related merchant incentive. As described above amerchant incentive may be related to a community program and thereforemay be available at one or more merchant stores that are within thevicinity of the community program. (The vicinity may be of varioussizes, a community park area, a neighbourhood, a city, a county, aprovince or state, a country, etc.) The merchant incentive, orinformation about the merchant incentive, may be communicated to amember, or a group of identified members, in a variety of means,including via a web page, via a mobile device, via an email or text,etc. A merchant incentive, or information about the merchant incentive,may be communicated to a mixture of members and third parties by avariety of means, including print media, radio or television broadcasts,web pages, billboards, emails, text, mobile devices, etc.

The communication of the merchant incentive to third parties mayintroduce said third parties to the one or more merchant stores, thecommunity program that the merchant incentive pertains to and/or themarketing program. In one embodiment of the present invention,transactions between third parties and merchants during a merchantincentive or a community program may be tracked and data regarding suchtransactions may be stored in the data storage area. Said data may beutilized by the data mining tool and the analytics mode to produceanalysis of the transactions to aid in the participation of the merchantin the marketing program, for example, such as to create new effectivemerchant incentives.

In one embodiment of the present invention, transactions may includetransactions that do not occur at a physical (bricks and mortar) storelocation, but may include transactions occurring in a digitalenvironment, such as via a website.

Example Method

A skilled reader will recognize that the marketing system and method ofthe present invention may function in a variety of ways. As an exampleof one embodiment of the present invention, a system administrator maycause a local community program to be stored in the marketing system,for example, such as Caribana, a festival celebrating Caribbean cultureheld in cities such as Toronto, Canada. One or more merchants registeredwith the marketing program may recognize that one or more Caribanaevents will occur near a store location. The one or more merchants maydevelop one or more merchant incentives related to Caribana. The one ormore merchant incentives related to Caribana may be communicated toparticipants, for example, to members that are located near to one ormore Caribana events, or to members that are located near to the one ormore merchants offering Caribana related incentives. The one or moremerchant incentives may also be communicated to third parties, andinformation regarding the marketing system may also be communicated tothird parties so that third parties can know how to become a participantof the marketing system.

Transaction details regarding transactions with the one or moremerchants whereby the one or more merchant incentives are redeemed maybe transferred to the marketing system and stored in the marketingsystem. A skilled reader will recognize that the means of transferringtransaction details to the marketing system may be varied and that theoptions may differ for online and offline transactions. Some of thepossible means of transferring transaction details for online andoffline transactions are discussed above, although a skilled reader willrecognize that the discussion does not provide a complete list of all ofthe possible transfer options it merely provides some examples oftransfer options.

A post-transaction survey may also be provided to participants and/orthird parties redeeming merchant incentives to gather informationrelevant to the transaction and the participants and/or third partiesundertaking the transaction.

The transactions may involve registered members of the marketingprogram. A member may be identified as a member during the transactionby using one or more participant identifiers and/or otheridentifications recognized by the marketing program as associated withthe member. For example, the member may use a participant identifier orother identification that is a financial card, a number generated by themarketing system, or any other identification.

The data mining tool, and in some instances the analytic mode, may beutilized to search the transaction details and other marketing systemdata to provide results. The results may indicate success measurementsfor promotions and the results may also indicate information that may beapplied to the creation of other incentives in the future. For example,the results may indicate demographic information regarding the personsredeeming incentives, including participants and third parties. In thecase of an incentive created by a merchant in relation to a Caribanaevent, the results may indicate that participants and/or third partieswanting to redeem an incentive may not be local to the merchantlocation, but may have traveled from a specific area, for example, suchas a specific town in the province, or a specific neighbourhood in thecity that is distant from the merchant location. In this manner thepresent invention may be utilized to draw assumptions regarding therelationships between transactions at a merchant location and aparticular incentive offered at that merchant location. A skilled readerwill recognize the variety of results that may be provided by thepresent invention and the ways that such results may be utilized byparticipants and/or third parties.

The data mining tool, and in some instances the analytic mode and/or thetransaction linking utility, may also recognize that the activities of aparticipant may cause that participant to be eligible for specificincentives. For example, the frequency of transactions with a merchant,the time of day of a transaction with a merchant, the creation of areview, or other activities may cause a participant to be eligible foran incentive. The data mining tool may automatically apply theincentive, such as a donation to a community group, may automaticallycommunicate the incentive to the participant, such as a coupon for afuture purchase, or may apply or communicate the incentive based uponinstructions by the administrator or merchant.

Cross-Sell

In another embodiment of the present invention, cross-sellingrelationships and programs may be created. A cross-sell involves atleast two merchants, or at least two merchant stores, that are generallynon-competing. A cross-sell occurs when a member completes transactionsat each of the two (or more) merchants involved in a cross-sellrelationship. A cross-sell may be required to include the transactionswith the merchants involved in a cross-sell relationship occurringwithin a specified period of time. Events of cross-selling may bevalidated by a query sent to the transaction linking utility inaccordance with particular rules that cause the transaction linkingutility to identify valid cross-sells by members. For example, atransaction with one of two cross-sell merchants followed within thespecified period of time with a transaction with the other cross-sellmerchant may be recognized as a cross-sell. As another example, if thetransactions are online, a click to complete a transaction with one oftwo cross-sell merchants followed by a click to complete a transactionwith the other cross-sell merchant may be recognized as a cross-sell.

As yet another example, a cross-sell may be refined based on the termsof the cross-sell incentive. Such terms may include specific times,specific day(s) of the week, minimum purchase restrictions, or otherterms. So that if a transaction occurred at each of two cross-sellmerchants and the transactions meet specific terms, for example, such asoccurring on a Tuesday between 5 pm and 8 pm, then this may berecognized as a cross-sell. A skilled reader will recognize that othercriteria may be utilized to define cross-sells.

Upon the completion of, or recognition of, a cross-sell a reward may begenerated and communicated or distributed to the member. In oneembodiment of the present invention, a member may be required to loginto the marketing program to accept or otherwise obtain the reward.Specific steps may be required to accept the reward, or alternativelythe reward may be transferred to the member's profile and be visiblewhen the member accesses his or her profile information. Other means ofaccepting or obtaining the reward may be utilized with the presentinvention as well. The reward may be of a variety of types, such as acoupon, bonus offer, prize, sweepstakes entry, etc. A reward maytherefore be redeemed in accordance with the nature of the reward.

A cross-sell relationship could be created amongst merchants, ormerchant stores for a variety of reasons. For example, a merchant thatincludes two or more stores could create a cross-sell relationshipwhereby a member would have to visit all the merchant stores beforereceiving a prize (e.g., such as a treasure hunt). As another example, amerchant having a single store may provide a reward after multiplevisits (e.g. after nine transactions a 50% discount will be applied tothe next transaction).

As yet another example, a group of merchants could unite to provide abenefit to members that undertake transactions at all, or some, of theassociated merchants. It may be possible for the benefit to increase asthe member undertakes transactions with an increasing number ofmerchants. It may be possible the marketing program may define the groupof merchants, for example, such as a group that includes merchants fromthe same category (e.g., sports stores) or from complimentary categories(e.g., clothing stores and shoe stores). It may be possible for thereward to involve a merchant outside the group of cross-sell merchants(e.g., transactions with a cross-sell group of three golf coursemerchants will generate a reward for a member that is a coupon for afree dinner at a restaurant merchant).

In one embodiment of the present invention chain cross-selling may occurbetween three or more merchants. Chain cross-selling may involve threeor more merchants, generally non-competing merchants, deciding to createa chain cross-sell group. The chain cross-sell group may involve threeor more merchants with related products and/or services that may offerincentives based upon a member frequenting three or more of the chaincross-sell group. A member in a chain cross-sell group may be outside ofthe marketing system. In a chain cross-sell group it may be possible forthe incentive offered to a member or other participant to increase asmore of the cross-sell group products and/or services are purchased. Themember, or other participant, may be recognized by the provision of anidentification that is stored in the marketing system, whereby themember is identified as a member of the marketing system, such as aparticipant identifier.

For example, a cross-sell group may include a hotel, golf course,restaurant, sports store and hiking guide in a particular location, suchas Banff, Alberta, during a particular event, such as the summer golfmonths. A member, or other participant, who stays in the hotel and playsgolf at the golf course in the cross-sell group may receive a 10%discount or other incentive. Whereas, if a member books a hotel room, around of golf and dinner at the restaurant that are part of thecross-sell group a 20% discount may be applied. And as the memberpurchases products and/or services from even more of the cross-sellgroup the incentives continue to increase. A member staying at thehotel, who golfed at the golf course and ate dinner at the restaurant,and who also purchases a product at the sports store may receive 40% offthe product purchased at the sports store. Should that member also booka hike with the hiking guide of the cross-sell group then the hike maybe provided at a 50% discount and a donation may be given to the BanffNational Park, or another community group. A skilled reader willrecognize that a variety of cross-sell groups may be formed and that avariety of incentive options may be provided based upon the cross-sellgroups.

Cross-selling incentives may be evaluated to determine the success ofthe cross-sell incentives. it may be possible for the cross-sellincentives to be evaluated as individual incentives, and as a group ofcross-sell incentives. In this manner the marketing system may evaluatewhether a particular incentive was successful on its own, and whether agroup of incentives were popular. In this manner it may be possible toidentify where cross-selling led to transactions frequently, includingtransactions that may not have otherwise occurred without the cross-sellincentive being offered. For example, did the offer of a hiking guidelead to more use of this service by members staying at a hotel, eatingat restaurant and golfing at a golf club that are part of a cross-sellgroup than would have occurred if the hiking guide was not included inthe cross-sell. A skilled reader will recognize the variety ofevaluations that may be undertaken of the individual and collectiveincentives involved in a cross-sell.

In one embodiment of the present invention, as shown in FIG. 11, two ormore merchants 150 may collaborate to produce one or more cross-sellcollaborations 152. The collaboration may involve one or more incentives154 provided by each merchant. The incentives of each merchant may becombined into a linked incentive 156. The linked incentive may include afurther incentive 170, that is honoured when transactions with each ofthe collaborator merchants are undertaken by a single member. A member158 may perform a query or search 160 utilizing a search engine or othermeans, and the linked incentive may be communicated to the member as aresult of the chain of search links accessed by the member. For example,clicking a search link of one of the merchants involved in thecollaboration may cause the linked incentive to be communicated to themember directly. The linked incentive may also be communicated and madeavailable to users by search engines and other media 161 as well. Thesearch history 162 of the search and the chain of search links may beprovided to the marketing system 164.

The member that undertook the search and had the linked incentivecommunicated to him or her, may undertake a transaction 166 at one ormore of the collaborating merchants. Transaction details 168 for each ofthe transactions may be transferred a transaction processing system 169that may generate transaction data 168, and the transaction data may betransferred to the marketing system 164. The marketing system mayprocess the transaction details and any post-transaction survey 167results provided by the member. The marketing system may generate acombined incentive report 172. For example, the generation of thecombined incentive report may occur when a merchant undertakestransactions with all of the collaborative members and triggers theadditional incentive, or at any other time. Results for sharing 174 maybe generated from the combined incentive report so that results of eachof the incentives in the linked incentive are shared with allcollaborative merchants, so that each merchant receives results relatingto its particular incentive and the additional incentive, results may beproduced to share some of the results of two or more collaborativemembers, or results may be produced in any other configuration. Resultsmay be compared to the collaboration, so that conditions of thecollaboration, such as the additional incentive, may be evaluated. Inparticular the comparison may consider whether the conditions werefulfilled. In some embodiments of the present invention the marketingprogram may auto-generate suggestions for cross-sell incentives orauto-generate cross-sell incentives for approval by collaboratingmerchants.

Cross-Loyalty

The marketing program of the present invention may further involvecross-loyalty programs or cross-marketing programs. Such cross-marketingprogram may function in a manner as described in U.S. patent applicationSer. No. 11/283,856. The cross-marketing programs of the presentinvention may further involve a variety of merchants and intermediaries,such as community programs. In this embodiment of the present inventionthe community program may work with the merchant to develop across-loyalty program. To aid a merchant in creating cross-loyaltyand/or cross-sell relationships, the data mining tool may be utilized bythe merchant to access information regarding other merchants and/orintermediaries (or groups of merchants and/or intermediaries) that areparticipants in the marketing program.

Some of the more advanced loyalty systems may be termed automated causemarketing (“ACM”). An ACM program typically automates dissemination ofbenefits to several parties involved in fundraising, including one ormore supported organizations (for example, charities), merchants, andindividuals (also referred to as members, consumers, or customers).Optimally, flow-through to the supported organizations is maximized inthe ACM model. One exemplary model of an ACM program is disclosed inU.S. patent application Ser. No. 12/118,923 to EDATANETWORKS™ for“Method, System, and Computer Program for Providing a Lovalty Engine forAutomated Cause Management”.

The present invention enables an intermediary such as an advertisingprovider to also be advantageously associated with the ACM program whilealso increasing contribution opportunities to the supportedorganizations and loyalty opportunities to the merchant. The merchantsand advertising provider may acquire and analyze data associated withconsumer-merchant transactions. The present invention is equallybeneficial for enabling an online advertising provider to benefit fromoffline transactions as it is from online transactions.

The present invention also provides the above advantages optimally usinga mobile device or other wireless means. The mobile device may enableoptimal dissemination of offers, rewards, contests, surveys, mapping, orother location or proximity based services Mobile access to an ACMprogram interface may also be provided.

Mobile Communications Facility

The present invention also discloses a mobile device utility that can beused with an ACM program to further enhance the systems and methodsdescribed above. The mobile device utility may receive and delivercontent between the ACM program and a member's mobile device usingSMS/MMS, cellular network, wi-fi, or other wireless mobilecommunications mediums and protocols. The mobile device utility maytransmit and receive information using a secure protocol

The mobile device utility is operable for any ACM program and, inparticular, should not be considered limited to an ACM program wheremerchants and supported organizations are of any particular type,whether local, regional, national, etc.

The mobile device utility may be synchronized in real time or near realtime with the ACM program. For example, if content such as surveys,offers, rewards, or contests are disseminated using the mobile deviceutility that content may not be made available to the same member usinga typical portal to the ACM program, such as the ACM program web site.Similarly, if the member receives content while using the typical portalto the ACM program that content may not be made available to the samemember via the mobile device utility. It should be noted that if the ACMprogram typically records the information exchanged between the ACMprogram and the member, the ACM program could be adapted to also recordassociated information exchanged with the member using the mobile deviceutility such that the mobile device utility may be a seamless additiononto the typical ACM program.

Optimally, the recording features of the ACM program would be operableto identify which information is exchanged using the mobile deviceutility, since such information may be desired by parties associatedwith the ACM program. This information can be advantageously used toprovide advanced analytics in connection with the movements of andtransactions of members. For example, mobile specific reports may begenerated for a merchant or intermediary or across the entire ACMprogram or a subset thereof, whereby information is provided related toall facets of member-mobile interaction including mobile surveys, mobilereward redemption, and mobile contest entries. These reports can be usedby merchants to determine whether to issue rewards based on locationtied to a member's prior shopping patterns or based on inventoryvariables.

A member may provide its mobile device information to the ACM programusing any of a number of methods. The member may navigate to the ACMprogram interface, such as a web site, authenticate as a registeredmember (in accordance with the ACM program details), select a linkcorresponding to mobile device setup and then provide the mobile deviceinformation such as phone number or other identifier. Alternatively, amember may access the web site using the mobile device.

In this case, a web page tailored to a mobile device may be displayed tothe member. The member can provide authentication information, and oncethe ACM program validates the member, the active mobile device can beassociated to the member's ACM program profile without the memberneeding to manually enter it. An unsuccessful authentication in eitherimplementation can be handled by the ACM program by providing the memberwith an alert that authentication failed.

It will be appreciated by those skilled in the art that other variationsof the embodiments described herein may also be practiced withoutdeparting from the scope of the invention. Other modifications aretherefore possible.

We claim:
 1. A computer-implemented system comprising: one or more datastorage devices storing at least one member profile and at least onemerchant profile, each of the at least one member profile comprising apayment identifier of a corresponding member; and an Internet serverhaving at least one processor configured to: receive or access datarelated to web-enabled mobile computing device online user activity ofat least one program member, the web-enabled mobile computing deviceonline user activity comprising at least one of browsing activity andsearching activity in one or more browsing or search sessions, whereinthe data related to the web-enabled mobile computing device online useractivity is associated with a member profile when the web-enabled mobilecomputing device online user activity is performed in a sessionassociated with the member profile; receive data associated with atransaction conducted with a merchant, wherein the data associated withthe transaction: includes a transaction amount, and a payment identifierassociated with a form of payment used in the transaction; and areexchanged via telecommunications hardware for the transaction with ashort range wireless network operating according to the 802.11 family ofstandards; when the payment identifier associated with the form ofpayment used in the transaction corresponds to the payment identifier ofa member profile, determine, at the at least one processor: thetransaction is associated with the corresponding member; a level ofcertainty that the transaction is linked to the web-enabled mobilecomputing device online user activity associated with the correspondingmember based on the data associated with the transaction; and a lengthof elapsed time between the occurrence of the transaction and theoccurrence of the web-enabled mobile computing device online useractivity of the corresponding member, wherein the determined level ofcertainty varies based on: the length of the elapsed time; the datarelated to the web-enabled mobile computing device online user activity;and the data associated with the transaction; and based on the level ofcertainty, generating signals to cause redirection of a portion of thetransaction amount to an account associated with an intermediary.
 2. Thesystem of claim 1, wherein the at least one processor is configured toreceive or access data regarding at least one member and at least onemerchant, the data regarding at least one of the at least one member andthe at least one merchant includes at least one of: information providedduring a sign-up process; information provided based on activities ofthe at least one member and the at least one merchant associated with amarketing program; and information provided by a third party data sourceto the system.
 3. The system of claim 1, wherein the at least oneprocessor is configured to generate one or more incentives based atleast in part on the at least one of browsing activity and searchingactivity, at least one of the one or more incentives including at leastone of the following: a discount, a donation to a community program, agiveaway, a sweepstakes entry, and rewards.
 4. The system of claim 3,wherein a data mining tool and analytic mode are applied to determinethe effectiveness of at least one of the one or more incentives.
 5. Thesystem of claim 3, wherein one or more incentives are provided bycross-selling collaboration between at least two of the one or moremerchants.
 6. The system of claim 3, wherein one or more incentives areprovided as part of a cross-loyalty or cross-marketing program betweenat least two of the one or more merchants, or at least one of the one ormore merchants and at least one intermediary.
 7. The system of claim 3,wherein the one or more incentives include a benefit to an intermediaryassociated with a community program, wherein the at least one or moreprocessor matches a location of the community to a location of the oneor more members to generate the one or more incentives.
 8. The system ofclaim 3, wherein the at least processor is configured to access orreceive data from third party sources, and said third party dataincludes information applicable to generation of the one or moreincentives, including at least one of the following: sales reports forthird party merchants indicating sales at particular periods of time;dates of events or holidays; or present or past weather forecasts. 9.The system of claim 1, wherein information for at least one member isaccessed from a third party data source in accordance with a boardingprocess, wherein the boarding process allows the third party data sourceto associate with the system, whereby the at least one member issigned-up with a marketing program, and other information may bereceived by the marketing program at any time after the sign-up process.10. The system of claim 1, wherein one or more incentives are generatedbased upon consumer behavioural results as indicated by the determinedlevel of certainty that the one or more transactions is the result ofthe web-enabled mobile computing device online user activity.
 11. Thesystem of claim 1, wherein one or more incentives are generated basedupon the determined level of certainty that the one or more transactionsis the result of a behavior associated with the web-enabled mobilecomputing device online user activity associated with a particularmember profile, said one or more incentives being generated for theparticular member.
 12. The system of claim 1, wherein a post-transactionsurvey is provided to a corresponding member after the transaction togather information regarding the transaction, said post-transactionsurvey including a question asking the corresponding member if onlineactivity results provided to the user resulted in the transaction,whereby the relationship between the search results and the transactionmay be determined definitively.
 13. The system of claim 1, wherein thecomputer-implemented system for linking online activity is aninter-connected environment implemented by at least one of the Internet,an intranet, and a networked environment.
 14. A method comprising:receiving, at an Internet server having at least one processor, datarelated to web-enabled mobile computing device online user activity ofat least one program member, the one line user activity comprising atleast one of browsing activity and searching activity in one or morebrowsing or search sessions, wherein the data related to the online useractivity is associated with a member profile when the online useractivity is performed in a session with the member profile; receiving,at the at least one processor, data associated with a transactionconducted with a merchant, wherein the data associated with thetransaction: includes a transaction amount, and a payment identifierassociated with a form of payment used in the transaction; and areexchanged via telecommunications hardware for the transaction with ashort range wireless network operating according to the 802.11 family ofstandards; when the payment identifier is linked to the member,determining, at the at least one processor: the transaction isassociated with the member; a level of certainty that the transaction islinked to the web-enabled mobile computing device online activityassociated with the corresponding member based on the data associatedwith the transaction and the data related to at least one of browsingactivity and searching activity; and a length of elapsed time betweenthe occurrence of the transaction and the occurrence of the web-enabledmobile computing device online user activity of the correspondingmember, wherein the determined level of certainty varies based on: thelength of the elapsed time; the data related to the online useractivity; and the data associated with the transaction; and based on thelevel of certainty, generating signals for redirecting a portion of thetransaction amount to an account associated with an intermediary. 15.The method of claim 14, further comprising applying a benefit to acommunity program, said benefit being a donation to the communityprogram.
 16. The method of claim 15, wherein the community programredirects the benefit to a third party beneficiary for an emergency,said third party beneficiary being one or more of the following: anothercommunity program; an emergency relief organization; or a team for aspecific emergency event, whereby the redirection of the benefit iscommunicated to a media outlet and thereby communicated to thepopulation generally, and whereby goodwill is generated for the merchantproviding the benefit to the community program that is redirected. 17.The method of claim 14, further comprising generating an incentive basedon the at least one of browsing and searching activity, the incentivebeing applied to provide a benefit to a member, said benefit being atleast one of the following: a discount, a donation to the communityprogram, a giveaway, a sweepstakes entry, and rewards.
 18. The method ofclaim 17, further comprising communicating the incentive to one or moreof the following: a communication device of a participant of a marketingprogram; a radio broadcaster; a print media; a television station; awebsite; and a search provider.
 19. The method of claim 17, furthercomprising accessing information from a remote data source and utilizingthe remote data in the analysis to generate the future incentivesuggestions.
 20. A computer-implemented system comprising: one or moredata storage devices storing at least one member profile and at leastone merchant profile, each of the at least one member profile comprisinga payment identifier of a corresponding member; and an Internet serverhaving at least one processor configured to: receive or access datarelated to web-enabled mobile computing device online user activity ofat least one program member, the web-enabled mobile computing deviceonline user activity comprising at least one of browsing activity andsearching activity in one or more browsing or search sessions, wherein:the data related to the web-enabled mobile computing device online useractivity is associated with a member profile when the web-enabled mobilecomputing device online user activity is performed in a sessionassociated with the member profile; information for at least one memberassociated with the member profile is accessed from a third party datasource in accordance with a boarding process; and the boarding processallows the third party data source to associate with a marketingprogram, whereby the at least one member associated with the memberprofile is signed-up with the marketing program; receive data associatedwith a transaction conducted with a merchant, wherein the dataassociated with the transaction: includes a transaction amount, and apayment identifier associated with a form of payment used in thetransaction; and are exchanged via telecommunications hardware for thetransaction with a short range wireless network operating according tothe 802.11 family of standards; when the payment identifier associatedwith the form of payment used in the transaction corresponds to thepayment identifier of a member profile, determine, at the at least oneprocessor: the transaction is associated with the corresponding member;a level of certainty that the transaction is linked to the web-enabledmobile computing device online activity associated with thecorresponding member based on the data associated with the transactionand the data related to at least one of browsing activity and searchingactivity; and a length of elapsed time between the occurrence of thetransaction and the occurrence of the web-enabled mobile computingdevice online user activity of the corresponding member, wherein thedetermined level of certainty varies based on: the length of the elapsedtime; the data related to the online user activity; and the dataassociated with the transaction; based on the level of certainty,generating signals to cause redirection of a portion of the transactionamount to an account associated with an intermediary; and transmitting apost-transaction survey to the corresponding member after thetransaction to gather information regarding the transaction, saidpost-transaction survey including a question asking the correspondingmember if online activity results provided to the corresponding memberresulted in the transaction, whereby the relationship between the searchresults and the transaction may be determined definitively.